I left a DevOps role last month after seven years because I wanted a significant pay increase and a change of environment. My previous job had supportive colleagues, interesting work, and the option to work from an office, but I felt underpaid. The new role pays about £1,000 more per month, but the company is smaller, fully remote, and already feels like a poor fit.
The main issues are limited autonomy because security must approve infrastructure changes and access requests, a confusing AWS setup with many accounts and profiles, restricted access to productivity and AI tools, and a large number of daily meetings. My manager mainly passes along requests from senior engineers instead of pushing back or helping the team, and several people have already left, including the person who interviewed me. The company has hired many DevOps engineers recently, but most of the team is still new.
The technical work itself is manageable; the bigger problems are being expected to move quickly without the necessary tools, constant coordination, and unclear decision-making. I am unsure whether this is just normal adjustment after changing companies, whether I am too accustomed to my previous workplace, or whether these are signs of a genuinely unhealthy environment. Should I give it more time while trying to improve things, or start interviewing immediately? Returning to my previous employer is possible, but I would prefer to find a better opportunity elsewhere.
4 Answers
A month is early, so I would not resign immediately, but I would absolutely keep interviewing. The pay is useful, and you can spend the next few months learning the environment, building relationships, and seeing whether the processes improve. You are not obligated to stop looking just because you accepted the job. If you leave, do it because the pattern remains bad, not because of one frustrating week.
This may be a normal contrast between a relaxed environment and a company with heavier compliance requirements. Security reviews, multiple accounts, and cross-team coordination can be part of operating a larger or more regulated platform. The real question is whether you can influence the system. Pick one painful problem, improve it, and use that success to build credibility with security and engineering. If you still have no support or decision-making power after a few months, then the role is probably not a good fit.
The turnover, weak management, constant meetings, and being held responsible for speed while security blocks access are meaningful warning signs. Some of the AWS friction may be solved with better architecture: use a central operations or identity account, assume roles into the workload accounts, and have Terraform run through a consistent CI or GitOps workflow. That can reduce the profile switching and manual access problems, but it will not fix a manager who cannot set priorities or a culture that is already losing people.
Good colleagues, worthwhile work, and a manager you can rely on are easy to undervalue until they are gone. A higher salary does not automatically compensate for a bad culture. I would keep the current paycheck, quietly explore other roles, and be more deliberate about interviewing next time. Ask specifically about meeting load, turnover, manager involvement, security approval times, production access, and how infrastructure changes are deployed. Going back to the old company is also reasonable if you left on good terms, but negotiate a raise or stronger role rather than simply returning to the same arrangement.
The deployment and automation setup is still immature, and security is working on a CI solution. I can probably improve some of the tooling, but I am not sure how much authority I will have to change the wider process.