I've told some young people in mentor/mentee situations before: Knowing when to quit is a useful skill ONLY IF you also possess superior judgement about what you might stand to gain by remaining, and data to support the decision either way. If you know you can land the better job, or even have a better offer, THAT is the situation where you need to know when to quit. If you have no leads and you're trying to break into a competitive space but could probably climb the ladder where you are up a few rungs in 2-5yrs, then sometimes it just pays to stay and grind it out a little.<p>I think sometimes uncertainty is misrepresented a little bit. I've been blessed to be able to make my own prices and so I don't really have to job-hop, but any moron with a brain can see that it's better over a long period of time to change jobs more often rather than less. It's just good sense at this point. Still, with that being said, when you're facing incomplete data, it's easy to let anxiety overrule the fact that your present employment, shitty as it may seem, shitty as it may feel to punch in and see the smug, passive, whatever it is you hate about your coworkers' faces, it's a steady job.<p>I've made mistakes where I jumped too soon, and where I've jumped too late or not at all. Personally, I regret the ones where I jumped too soon a lot more because I associate those decisions with low resilience to frustration I had, and low discipline to exert my patience further. Maybe I'm wrong, but looking back on several decades of fucking things up in professional environments, that's the way I feel.<p>If anybody is reading this and thinking about how much they hate their jobs, I could not more strongly advise you to hold the course for now unless you have an absolute certainty in hand, if you're in the United States especially. I've lived in DC for many years now, and it feels more tense and nervous now than 2002 and 2008-9 put together.<p>Free your mind, do what you have to do, but don't jump ship with clouds like these on the horizon. Just wait a little bit, and see what happens first.