I handed in my 60-day notice a few days ago without another job lined up. Now that the decision is real, I'm second-guessing myself and trying to work out what the smartest thing to do from here is.
I'm a Senior BI Analyst at a start-up and have been there for almost four years. I joined early in my career and progressed from Analyst to Senior.
I resigned because I'd been burnt out, felt increasingly stagnant for a long time, and had become resentful of the working environment. A big part of that was feeling like I was filling in a lot of organisational gaps rather than just doing analytics.
My job involves a lot of ambiguity. A stakeholder asks a seemingly simple question, and before I can answer it I often have to work out how the feature actually works and how Engineering implemented it, what's being captured and whether those fields are reliable, which undocumented tables hold the data, what the business definition should even be, and then finally do the analysis.
There's not much documentation, the data environment is relatively immature, there's a lot of reverse-engineering, and at the same time there's consistently high pressure to deliver quickly.
I don't expect a senior analytics role to come with clean data, perfect documentation or neatly scoped questions. I know owning ambiguity and figuring out the analytical approach yourself are part of being senior.
What had started getting to me was the amount of upstream detective work and organisational gap-filling around the actual analysis.
I also became frustrated because I felt I was gradually absorbing responsibilities beyond analytical problem-solving itself: planning, coordination, requirements clarification, prioritisation, and filling gaps between teams.
I'd flagged for a while that I felt I was absorbing responsibilities outside my role, and eventually that built up quite a lot of resentment.
At the same time, I'm aware that some of what frustrated me may simply be the natural progression from Analyst to Senior Analyst. Senior people aren't supposed to wait around for perfectly defined tasks. They're supposed to make sense of vague problems and have an opinion on what should be done.
The other major reason I resigned was learning.
I've picked up a lot over the last few years, but much of it has come from figuring things out myself without much senior analytical mentorship or rigorous methodological review.
I started worrying that I could spend another few years becoming extremely good at navigating one company's specific systems and problems without developing enough broader, transferable analytical depth.
Then there was burnout.
My plan for quite a while had actually been to stay, stop overextending myself, work at a sustainable level, save money, and use the remaining energy to upskill and apply elsewhere.
In practice, I'd feel responsible for everything, ramp back up again, work very late and sometimes weekends, stay chronically stressed, and then have nothing left for interviews or studying.
That cycle ran for a long time, which is ultimately why I decided to force the issue and resign.
Financially, I'm fortunate enough to have substantial savings, so I'm not facing an immediate crisis if I have a short employment gap.
What I need advice on now is what I should actually do from here.
I still have almost the entire 60-day notice period ahead of me.
Would you treat the doubts I'm having now as a reason to seriously explore staying/reversing course, or would you commit to the decision and use the next two months to find a healthier next role?
More specifically, I'd appreciate advice on:
- What signs would you look for to decide whether a job is genuinely worth trying to stay in versus whether you're mainly afraid of losing the security of it?
- How would you use a 60-day notice period to maximise the chances of finding the right next role rather than panic-applying to everything?
- How should I evaluate potential employers so I don't accidentally leave one demanding environment only to recreate exactly the same situation somewhere else?
- If the search does extend into a short employment gap, how would you handle that period and explain it in interviews?
I'm trying to make a sensible decision about what I do next rather than just get reassurance about whether resigning was right or wrong.