When is short tenure a red flag?(jacobian.org)
jacobian.org
When is short tenure a red flag?
https://jacobian.org/2022/oct/14/when-is-short-tenure-a-red-flag/
327 comments
> I can come up with a reasonably convincing story for every individual Job about why I quit that one. But taken together, there's no reasonable story that would convince a hiring manager.
> It comes down to this: I hate being an employee.
If the bottom line is that you hate being an employee, then it seems that being suspicious of your resume would be the correct call.
> I want to work on my own projects on my own terms. This is the only way I can find work that is worth doing.
This is something hiring managers try to screen for during the hiring process. Being part of a team and working together on the teams' terms is crucial. There isn't room for a "lone wolf" kind of programmer in most companies. This personality might work at small companies that can only afford to hire a single programmer who owns an entire domain from start to finish, but those jobs come with their own issues.
> It comes down to this: I hate being an employee.
If the bottom line is that you hate being an employee, then it seems that being suspicious of your resume would be the correct call.
> I want to work on my own projects on my own terms. This is the only way I can find work that is worth doing.
This is something hiring managers try to screen for during the hiring process. Being part of a team and working together on the teams' terms is crucial. There isn't room for a "lone wolf" kind of programmer in most companies. This personality might work at small companies that can only afford to hire a single programmer who owns an entire domain from start to finish, but those jobs come with their own issues.
I'm trying to figure out which part of the post you're replying to suggests that they're looking to work for you but I can't find it. Yet your response presumes it and comes off as presumptuous.
Candidates are wise to screen out hiring managers like that. They generally don't run teams worth working for, and if you're not smart enough to filter out managers like that, you might end up with too many short tenures.
Candidates are wise to screen out hiring managers like that. They generally don't run teams worth working for, and if you're not smart enough to filter out managers like that, you might end up with too many short tenures.
> I'm trying to figure out which part of the post you're replying to suggests that they're looking to work for you but I can't find it. Yet your response presumes it and comes off as presumptuous.
I wasn't trying to suggest the parent commenter was trying to work for me (nor would that even make logical sense, given that I'm replying to them...)
The comment was a general observation on the hiring process, short tenures, and how hiring managers operate. I meant it in the general context of the article we're all commenting on.
The bottom line is that hiring managers are looking for good employees. If someone outwardly identifies as a person who "hates being an employee" then it would seem the system is working if they're struggling to convince hiring managers otherwise.
I wasn't trying to suggest the parent commenter was trying to work for me (nor would that even make logical sense, given that I'm replying to them...)
The comment was a general observation on the hiring process, short tenures, and how hiring managers operate. I meant it in the general context of the article we're all commenting on.
The bottom line is that hiring managers are looking for good employees. If someone outwardly identifies as a person who "hates being an employee" then it would seem the system is working if they're struggling to convince hiring managers otherwise.
> The bottom line is that hiring managers are looking for good employees.
I think this looks closest to the problem of misunderstanding. Hiring managers should look for people who solve their problems, not for good employees (in the sense of this discussion). Hating being an employee should be understood correctly.
I think this looks closest to the problem of misunderstanding. Hiring managers should look for people who solve their problems, not for good employees (in the sense of this discussion). Hating being an employee should be understood correctly.
The thing is, someone who's going to move on in say a year is going to cause more problems than they solve.
Firstly it means the hiring manager has to redo this whole process again. So if nothing else a problem for him.
Secondly everything the person worked on will have to be moved to someone else - an expensive cost of time.
Thirdly there's typically a reason for them leaving, and they often pollute the workspace with that discontent on their way out.
As an employer it's not hard to find people with sufficient skills. Despite what programmers think it's not tech chops that are unique. Being a "good employee" for lots of definitions of "good" is exactly what I'm looking for.
Firstly it means the hiring manager has to redo this whole process again. So if nothing else a problem for him.
Secondly everything the person worked on will have to be moved to someone else - an expensive cost of time.
Thirdly there's typically a reason for them leaving, and they often pollute the workspace with that discontent on their way out.
As an employer it's not hard to find people with sufficient skills. Despite what programmers think it's not tech chops that are unique. Being a "good employee" for lots of definitions of "good" is exactly what I'm looking for.
Honestly I think most managers would rather lose someone with 1 year tenure than 5 years.
One year is plenty of time to make many meaningful contributions, especially if the employee is already experienced. You might not get the super deep knowledge to drive roadmaps and cross team projects. But it's definitely not going to be a net negative unless the employee is just bad (so not likely to make it to a year).
Don't compare the right person staying only one year to the right person staying 3 years. Compre them to no hire, or to the wrong person being hired. Getting amazing people who want to stay with you forever is really rare.
One year is plenty of time to make many meaningful contributions, especially if the employee is already experienced. You might not get the super deep knowledge to drive roadmaps and cross team projects. But it's definitely not going to be a net negative unless the employee is just bad (so not likely to make it to a year).
Don't compare the right person staying only one year to the right person staying 3 years. Compre them to no hire, or to the wrong person being hired. Getting amazing people who want to stay with you forever is really rare.
For my domain and in my experience (deeply embedded firmware on custom mixed signal ASICs) ramp up time is around 6 months to break even, a year to be modestly productive, and 2 years to be actually productive (because you understand enough of the domain to contribute at a cross-functional, system level).
Hiring managers need to look for good employees as well as people who solve their problems, and whoever joins the team is going to need months of training to be productive.
Someone who jumps ship after a year is...not entirely useless, but was certainly a waste.
Perhaps it's different in other domains.
Hiring managers need to look for good employees as well as people who solve their problems, and whoever joins the team is going to need months of training to be productive.
Someone who jumps ship after a year is...not entirely useless, but was certainly a waste.
Perhaps it's different in other domains.
> Hiring managers should look for people who solve their problems, not for good employees
These two things are one and the same.
The idea of a mercenary developer who shows up, solves problems in exchange for money, and then disappears in a relatively short period of time is exactly what contractors are for. Not all problems are amenable to the contractor model, though. It also takes extra work to prepare problems to be solved in this piecewise fashion, so you can’t just apply the contractor model to random problems and expect good results. There’s a reason people loathe consulting companies.
Full time employees really do need to ramp up, integrate with the team, learn how the company works, build relationships within the company, and otherwise become an integrated employee.
These two things are one and the same.
The idea of a mercenary developer who shows up, solves problems in exchange for money, and then disappears in a relatively short period of time is exactly what contractors are for. Not all problems are amenable to the contractor model, though. It also takes extra work to prepare problems to be solved in this piecewise fashion, so you can’t just apply the contractor model to random problems and expect good results. There’s a reason people loathe consulting companies.
Full time employees really do need to ramp up, integrate with the team, learn how the company works, build relationships within the company, and otherwise become an integrated employee.
I think these should actually be written in the job ads because I wouldn’t want to work for a colleague who has your mentality. I worked with many bunch of sit-on-your-chair claim your paycheck at the end of the month types, another colleague another competition types, and this one is the most complex: overly-invested/$feelingLikeOwnerYetOwnNoShares types but yet I have no way to screen them during the interview process and a single mention in the job ad description could help me save some time: Companies should immediately tell if they would reject job-hoppers, or particularly screen for loyalist in tech(ones with delusion given commercial activity in IT), that is a company I can respect!
> Companies should immediately tell if they would reject job-hoppers
Job-hopping isn't some arbitrary threshold that gets crossed. It's more of a pattern that gets identified while evaluating a person's resume.
When I say "job hopper" I don't mean someone who has 10 years of experience across 3 or 4 different jobs. The "job hopper" resumes I see are some times as extreme as 12 jobs in 10 years, or occasionally people who have never reached the 1 year mark at any company. If someone can't last a full year as an FTE at any company, it's hard to argue that there isn't a problem.
It's not a big deal for someone who is 1-2 years into their career. But when someone is 10 years into their career and they're not staying anywhere long enough to really make an impact, why would any hiring manager reasonably expect that to be different after hiring them again for job number 11 or whatever it ends up being? The most likely outcome is that the pattern continues.
Job-hopping isn't some arbitrary threshold that gets crossed. It's more of a pattern that gets identified while evaluating a person's resume.
When I say "job hopper" I don't mean someone who has 10 years of experience across 3 or 4 different jobs. The "job hopper" resumes I see are some times as extreme as 12 jobs in 10 years, or occasionally people who have never reached the 1 year mark at any company. If someone can't last a full year as an FTE at any company, it's hard to argue that there isn't a problem.
It's not a big deal for someone who is 1-2 years into their career. But when someone is 10 years into their career and they're not staying anywhere long enough to really make an impact, why would any hiring manager reasonably expect that to be different after hiring them again for job number 11 or whatever it ends up being? The most likely outcome is that the pattern continues.
I agree with you, with one caveat. Why is one year not enough time to make an impact?
Isn't a key in agile development the iterated development? Wouldn't a year have plenty of iterations where a developer could build out tooling, ci/cd processes, ship many multiple long lasting features?
You can absolutely make an impact multiple times within a year, but the odds of those "impacts" being a net positive without ever having maintained the results is not good.
If I'm hiring for a senior or better role, I want you to be able to make meaningful, sustainable changes in large and complex systems. It can take the better part of a year to even fully understand many complex systems, so it's unlikely you ever experienced the full long term affects of your changes.
If I'm hiring for a senior or better role, I want you to be able to make meaningful, sustainable changes in large and complex systems. It can take the better part of a year to even fully understand many complex systems, so it's unlikely you ever experienced the full long term affects of your changes.
> You can absolutely make an impact multiple times within a year, but the odds of those "impacts" being a net positive without ever having maintained the results is not good.
Fully agree. I've seen a few FTEs come in, try to make a giant splash with changes, then leave right when their changes have any sort of major issue.
I'm still dealing with bad code from someone that came in and tried to do that.
Fully agree. I've seen a few FTEs come in, try to make a giant splash with changes, then leave right when their changes have any sort of major issue.
I'm still dealing with bad code from someone that came in and tried to do that.
This is one of the key "promises" of agile development, which to me shows why agile promises more than it can deliver often times.
> The "job hopper" resumes I see are some times as extreme as 12 jobs in 10 years, or occasionally people who have never reached the 1 year mark at any company.
Oh, man, I briefly worked adjacent to someone like that who went on to have principal and director level roles at pretty well-known start-ups, despite never sticking to any role for a year (according to their own LinkedIn!). Apparently they're now CTO of a small start-up, which seems like a recipe for disaster.
Oh, man, I briefly worked adjacent to someone like that who went on to have principal and director level roles at pretty well-known start-ups, despite never sticking to any role for a year (according to their own LinkedIn!). Apparently they're now CTO of a small start-up, which seems like a recipe for disaster.
Never reaching a year at 10 jobs is something to ask I think however:
> why would any hiring manager reasonably expect that to be different after hiring them again for job 11
Thats is I think still the wrong approach, signals the wrong mentality in an IT company(a company thats greatest asset is its employees). Investing in employees can never be a saving center in a good IT business, considering all businesses are becoming IT businesses perhaps in every business in this context. If a candidate has the skills and took time to apply, if they are qualified you are responsible to hire them and keep them. If I was the manager of the hiring manager, I’d probably fire this hiring manager for keeping the organization dumber, and seeks his own interest/status-quo seeking behavior & protectionism with this behavior/approach/mentality. I do believe in moving mountains in 3-6 months, especially in badly managed projects or super fast growing companies.
> why would any hiring manager reasonably expect that to be different after hiring them again for job 11
Thats is I think still the wrong approach, signals the wrong mentality in an IT company(a company thats greatest asset is its employees). Investing in employees can never be a saving center in a good IT business, considering all businesses are becoming IT businesses perhaps in every business in this context. If a candidate has the skills and took time to apply, if they are qualified you are responsible to hire them and keep them. If I was the manager of the hiring manager, I’d probably fire this hiring manager for keeping the organization dumber, and seeks his own interest/status-quo seeking behavior & protectionism with this behavior/approach/mentality. I do believe in moving mountains in 3-6 months, especially in badly managed projects or super fast growing companies.
If you haven't stayed at any single position for at least a year, then odds are you haven't developed some skills crucial for your job.
Sure, you can move a mountain in 3-6 months, I've seen such people. Most of them will move the mountain to a wrong place, and won't stay to help bring it back at the desired one. They will just go, leaving chaos back, totally unaware of the mess they created. Or they will move the mountain to the correct place, but will do it in such a way, that no-one is able to maintain, improve, or fix the mountain.
Leaving before a year or two, means you never owned your mistakes. You never tweaked your engineering intuition for teamwork, reliability, or maintainability.
Hey, you might be brilliant, but that's not what engineering is about.
Sure, you can move a mountain in 3-6 months, I've seen such people. Most of them will move the mountain to a wrong place, and won't stay to help bring it back at the desired one. They will just go, leaving chaos back, totally unaware of the mess they created. Or they will move the mountain to the correct place, but will do it in such a way, that no-one is able to maintain, improve, or fix the mountain.
Leaving before a year or two, means you never owned your mistakes. You never tweaked your engineering intuition for teamwork, reliability, or maintainability.
Hey, you might be brilliant, but that's not what engineering is about.
You are basically saying big work doesn't ever get done in 3-6 months of someone joining a team, or its so remarkably rare that you would rather completely write off the rare case (who sits at the opposite spectrum of what you wish to weed out) than risk hiring a basket case.
Mountains don't ever get moved, the problem gets planned properly or it doesn't. Testing takes forever but development along a single trajectory is always fast.
Mountains don't ever get moved, the problem gets planned properly or it doesn't. Testing takes forever but development along a single trajectory is always fast.
There is no rare case at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Significant contributions aren’t a settled thing after six months. There always are loose ends to tie, things to reflect upon or unforeseen evolution forcing you to come back.
The issue with people leaving after six months is not that they might not have made a significant contribution in these six months. It’s that they never had to live through the consequences of what they did. It’s not a deal breaker but it’s career limiting because I very much want to hire people who know how to deal with things not going to plan and able to own their work. That’s why experienced people are paid more after all.
I’m equally suspicious of people with ten years of experience who can’t explain to me when something they were working on went wrong and what they did to fix it. It’s nearly impossible to work ten years on major projects and not having something blowing up on you at some point.
Significant contributions aren’t a settled thing after six months. There always are loose ends to tie, things to reflect upon or unforeseen evolution forcing you to come back.
The issue with people leaving after six months is not that they might not have made a significant contribution in these six months. It’s that they never had to live through the consequences of what they did. It’s not a deal breaker but it’s career limiting because I very much want to hire people who know how to deal with things not going to plan and able to own their work. That’s why experienced people are paid more after all.
I’m equally suspicious of people with ten years of experience who can’t explain to me when something they were working on went wrong and what they did to fix it. It’s nearly impossible to work ten years on major projects and not having something blowing up on you at some point.
> That’s why experienced people are paid more after all.
They are paid to stick around? I thought good people would produce work that was well thought out enough to not require endless amounts of "maintenance".
They are paid to stick around? I thought good people would produce work that was well thought out enough to not require endless amounts of "maintenance".
They are paid better because they know what they are doing and they know what they are doing because they have been through it and experienced what should and should not be done.
How do you know how much maintenance your work actually needed if you never stuck out long enough to witness it?
How do you know how much maintenance your work actually needed if you never stuck out long enough to witness it?
Because its stable and there's no more serious feature requests. If the job description is no longer applicable then I think its fair to consider that a reasonable resignation moment. The employer can change the job requirements as much as they like, but no hard feelings if I'm no longer signed on for what you demand today.
I agree more with peteradio.
Personally, I'd refrain from throwing around "If I was the manager of the hiring manager" rhetorics when responding to PragmaticPulp; that's someone w/ a lot of hiring experience in big tech.
I'll throw my own two cents as someone who interviewed a couple hundred senior/staff level eng candidates. When a candidate comes around w/ 10+ years of experience, a career filled with one year stints will not pass the bar for L6 level because some of the evaluated requirements (e.g "consistent cross-functional impact") simply cannot be achieved in <12 month stints (and this shows in the interviews)
Something to consider is that tenured big tech interviewers can have hundreds of interviews w/ 10+ YOE candidates under their belts; they've seen high performers and low performers and inflated titles and smooth talkers and everything in between. So when they say someone doesn't pass a bar, it's not just a quick dismissal of a resume (the interviewing process at these companies typically doesn't even allow that); instead there's a lot of interviewing experience behind that statement.
I'll throw my own two cents as someone who interviewed a couple hundred senior/staff level eng candidates. When a candidate comes around w/ 10+ years of experience, a career filled with one year stints will not pass the bar for L6 level because some of the evaluated requirements (e.g "consistent cross-functional impact") simply cannot be achieved in <12 month stints (and this shows in the interviews)
Something to consider is that tenured big tech interviewers can have hundreds of interviews w/ 10+ YOE candidates under their belts; they've seen high performers and low performers and inflated titles and smooth talkers and everything in between. So when they say someone doesn't pass a bar, it's not just a quick dismissal of a resume (the interviewing process at these companies typically doesn't even allow that); instead there's a lot of interviewing experience behind that statement.
> Personally, I'd refrain from throwing around "If I was the manager of the hiring manager" rhetorics when responding to PragmaticPulp; that's someone w/ a lot of hiring experience in big tech.
Having seen a bunch of companies and hiring managers, I don't believe PP's approach is the correct one if he wants to maximize results, not minimize efforts.
There are reasons why at some point stellar candidates stop considering Big Tech, companies like FAANG etc. and also why good engineers deteriorate if staying there for too long (doesn't apply to certain departments, like RnD). Policies are simplifications, and hiring good candidates is a hard problem in modern industry; removing flexibility only makes the task that much harder.
Having seen a bunch of companies and hiring managers, I don't believe PP's approach is the correct one if he wants to maximize results, not minimize efforts.
There are reasons why at some point stellar candidates stop considering Big Tech, companies like FAANG etc. and also why good engineers deteriorate if staying there for too long (doesn't apply to certain departments, like RnD). Policies are simplifications, and hiring good candidates is a hard problem in modern industry; removing flexibility only makes the task that much harder.
I mean, I think "maximizing results" is a bit of a loaded term. The bar at FAANGs and adjacent companies is already very high to begin with; their systems are optimized to prevent bad hires and I'd argue they're quite successful at that. Also worth noting that when you hire at scale, optimizing for finding mythical 10x'ers doesn't scale, almost by definition.
The other thing is that you're assuming a hypothetical candidate w/ only short tenures is someone who is necessarily an ace, vs the original claim that this person is likely a dud. The point I'm making is that in a real concrete scenario w/ lots of numbers to look at, people w/ that sort of resume don't perform well when benchmarked against known high performers. Which then begs the question of whether it is even reasonable to assume that there's any overlap between the extreme job hopper archetype and the "ace" archetype statistically speaking, when comparing to the stats for the cohort of people with "normal" tenures.
I can point to a vast pool of people jumping from one 6 month contract to the next that tend to do abysmally bad in interviews, and I can tell you none of the staff+ or director-type people I know are extreme job hoppers, as anecdotes to support the argument that the overly short tenure strategy doesn't perform as well as average tenures. You'd need to provide a very strong argument for the idea that "short tenures = good heuristic for finding golden needle in a haystack" is a superior strategy for either job seekers or employers, because I just don't see it.
The other thing is that you're assuming a hypothetical candidate w/ only short tenures is someone who is necessarily an ace, vs the original claim that this person is likely a dud. The point I'm making is that in a real concrete scenario w/ lots of numbers to look at, people w/ that sort of resume don't perform well when benchmarked against known high performers. Which then begs the question of whether it is even reasonable to assume that there's any overlap between the extreme job hopper archetype and the "ace" archetype statistically speaking, when comparing to the stats for the cohort of people with "normal" tenures.
I can point to a vast pool of people jumping from one 6 month contract to the next that tend to do abysmally bad in interviews, and I can tell you none of the staff+ or director-type people I know are extreme job hoppers, as anecdotes to support the argument that the overly short tenure strategy doesn't perform as well as average tenures. You'd need to provide a very strong argument for the idea that "short tenures = good heuristic for finding golden needle in a haystack" is a superior strategy for either job seekers or employers, because I just don't see it.
Huh? If someone never stays for more than a year at a job, unless they are consulting gigs, that’s a red flag. The person is either dumb, unable to complete tasks, a risk due to behavior/etc, or otherwise problematic.
Sometimes you see people who hop around while transitioning between roles. It’s fairly typical to see veterans hit 2-3 places after leaving the service. Likewise, if someone leaves a unique vertical (ie healthcare, government, some finance), some hopping around makes sense. But like all things outliers are usually outliers for a reason.
Sometimes you see people who hop around while transitioning between roles. It’s fairly typical to see veterans hit 2-3 places after leaving the service. Likewise, if someone leaves a unique vertical (ie healthcare, government, some finance), some hopping around makes sense. But like all things outliers are usually outliers for a reason.
> Huh? If someone never stays for more than a year at a job, unless they are consulting gigs, that’s a red flag. The person is either dumb, unable to complete tasks, a risk due to behavior/etc, or otherwise problematic.
Really, that's the only conclusion here? Can't a person, who's much better engineer than an interview-goer - I mean, to modern interviews in the industry - have to get at some point a position which he isn't so sure about, get his concerns realized, and made to leave? It's tough market for good engineers, despite some media would tell otherwise; search for a position could take months, more than half a year sometimes, and engineers typically have to make some money, not only working software. So if a good engineer loses a good position, it's a situation against him to find another one - and job hopping bias only makes it worse for everybody, except maybe those bad companies who still hire him, but which can't sustain him.
Really, that's the only conclusion here? Can't a person, who's much better engineer than an interview-goer - I mean, to modern interviews in the industry - have to get at some point a position which he isn't so sure about, get his concerns realized, and made to leave? It's tough market for good engineers, despite some media would tell otherwise; search for a position could take months, more than half a year sometimes, and engineers typically have to make some money, not only working software. So if a good engineer loses a good position, it's a situation against him to find another one - and job hopping bias only makes it worse for everybody, except maybe those bad companies who still hire him, but which can't sustain him.
That's reasonable, and rational, but at the same time I don't want to disrupt my team by bringing in someone who might decide they don't like the job after six months and who isn't able to ask the questions they need answers to during the hiring process to find that out. Consequently I might miss out on some good engineers by rejecting people with a series of short jobs on their resume and I accept that's a downside for me. The upside is better though.
I don't care if the candidate is having a hard time finding their ideal job. I care about my team.
I don't care if the candidate is having a hard time finding their ideal job. I care about my team.
> Really, that's the only conclusion here?
Well, yes, because any other conclusion really misunderstands what problem the hiring process is solving. It is not optimizing for hiring the best engineer possible, it's aiming to minimize a range of possible headaches for the employer. There's a hundred ways that best engineer could have work or personality traits that are absolutely terrible for your organization.
Well, yes, because any other conclusion really misunderstands what problem the hiring process is solving. It is not optimizing for hiring the best engineer possible, it's aiming to minimize a range of possible headaches for the employer. There's a hundred ways that best engineer could have work or personality traits that are absolutely terrible for your organization.
How do you assess, or even self-assess engineer goodness if they’re never around? Most people take a few months to get productive at a given job and become less productive when they get ready to leave.
So the strawman engineer who has never been at a job for more than a year probably only had 4-6 months of productive work at these jobs, and never had any meaningful responsibilities or career growth.
In my experience, most folks stay around for 2-3 years at a job or >5.
So the strawman engineer who has never been at a job for more than a year probably only had 4-6 months of productive work at these jobs, and never had any meaningful responsibilities or career growth.
In my experience, most folks stay around for 2-3 years at a job or >5.
Thanks for all your comments on this thread. Made me think more about this issue than I ever had before. Props for standing up to the hive mind. I think for me the crux is that searching/interviewing/etc. all that stuff to find a job _fucking sucks_ and anyone not managing to either pick the right jobs or stay at their current one is a big red flag. I have trouble imagining someone not hating the process of finding a job and so why can't they avoid having to go through it every year?
It's a funny industry full of people making tech to "meritocracize" society and enable everyone; but will dismiss you if you look one pixel different than some arbitrary rule they just thought about when eating sushi at an overpriced cr*phole.
> If a candidate has the skills and took time to apply, if they are qualified you are responsible to hire them and keep them.
The problem with this mentality is that the hiring process isn’t a 1-on-1 process between candidate and employer. When a job opening is posted, you get multiple applications from different people.
It doesn’t make sense to suggest that hiring managers are obligated to hire the first candidate who applies. They collect a number of candidates and try to give the role to the person most qualified for the job.
And that is the core problem for job hopping applicants: Inevitably, you’re going to go up against other candidates with resumes suggestive of longer tenures and, in turn, bigger accomplishments at companies.
The problem with this mentality is that the hiring process isn’t a 1-on-1 process between candidate and employer. When a job opening is posted, you get multiple applications from different people.
It doesn’t make sense to suggest that hiring managers are obligated to hire the first candidate who applies. They collect a number of candidates and try to give the role to the person most qualified for the job.
And that is the core problem for job hopping applicants: Inevitably, you’re going to go up against other candidates with resumes suggestive of longer tenures and, in turn, bigger accomplishments at companies.
> And that is the core problem for job hopping applicants: Inevitably, you’re going to go up against other candidates with resumes suggestive of longer tenures and, in turn, bigger accomplishments at companies.
Can you consider job hopping as an advantage of the candidate, the same way you seem to consider it as a disadvantage?
I've seen this bias for various people many times, and I also have examples among my fellow engineers, way more competent than average level in tech companies, who can't find a new position, not without many months of search and being dismissed for imagined shortcomings from the fragile interviewing process. Job hopping bias is one of traits lately which skews the field against them even more.
Can you consider job hopping as an advantage of the candidate, the same way you seem to consider it as a disadvantage?
I've seen this bias for various people many times, and I also have examples among my fellow engineers, way more competent than average level in tech companies, who can't find a new position, not without many months of search and being dismissed for imagined shortcomings from the fragile interviewing process. Job hopping bias is one of traits lately which skews the field against them even more.
You keep mentioning “very competent engineers” which somehow experience repeated short tenures. Might I suggest that competency is not just about technical skills, and that soft skills are also part of the expected “brilliant engineer” package?
> Might I suggest that competency is not just about technical skills, and that soft skills are also part of the expected “brilliant engineer” package?
Basically, no. Soft skills are sufficiently different, so that mismatch their should be considered differently. Just like hiring is a hard problem, retaining hard-skillers is something industry has no good solution at the moment.
Basically, no. Soft skills are sufficiently different, so that mismatch their should be considered differently. Just like hiring is a hard problem, retaining hard-skillers is something industry has no good solution at the moment.
If they don't have enough soft-skills the hard skills aren't worth retaining in a typical corporation.
> way more competent than average level in tech companies
How does one evaluate the competency an engineer who has never had to consider and be responsible for the implications of their decisions two or three years down the road?
How does one evaluate the competency an engineer who has never had to consider and be responsible for the implications of their decisions two or three years down the road?
I think one perspective for companies looking to hire FTEs is that at some point, those "job hopper" advantages are best captured by hiring consultants and other non-full-time people for fixed term gigs. (It's another question to ask the job hopper, too, why don't they go into consulting or fixed contract work?) Sometimes that will involve them writing code, other times advising/overseeing/helping some internal team, but at some point they've done what was needed and it's see you later. Your actual full time employees though, you want them to stick around.
The last big company I worked at made it pretty easy to "team hop", which I'm sure cut attrition to the company overall by quite a bit. There was even a cool "sniper team" that would move around to assist different teams every few months. And of course there were the summer interns, most teams tried to make them net-positives and productive during their few months -- that is, even with some overhead of spinning up to the environment, having some team members mentoring them, and having to make sure their work is well understood enough by others to survive them taking off, you're still happier they were there than not. But IIRC no one was directly hired onto the sniper team, they were internal transfers. Maybe some were job hoppers in the past. But most teams interviewing new outside candidates for FT roles want the same sort of expected stability as everyone else, so of course too frequent job hopping isn't going to be seen positively.
I had a fun experience interviewing someone for a management role, he had previously left the company (after a year or so as a dev and about the same as a freshly transitioned manager) for another, but after maybe a year and a half or so at the other was thinking of coming back to the old one. I can't remember my phrasing but I basically asked him what sort of guarantees (I know I didn't use this word but it captures the desire) he could make that he wouldn't just leave again after a year or so, when this particular position really needed someone invested for at least 3 years. His answer was something like a pretty floaty "we never know what life will throw at us", which sure, there are no real guarantees here, but still, you could at least try and make me believe, like demonstrating a passion for the underlying product space or something, or heck even a simple mercenary view of trying to get a lot more RSUs that don't vest after that many years would be acceptable to me (if not others). Anyway, I recommended against him, for that and other reasons.
The last big company I worked at made it pretty easy to "team hop", which I'm sure cut attrition to the company overall by quite a bit. There was even a cool "sniper team" that would move around to assist different teams every few months. And of course there were the summer interns, most teams tried to make them net-positives and productive during their few months -- that is, even with some overhead of spinning up to the environment, having some team members mentoring them, and having to make sure their work is well understood enough by others to survive them taking off, you're still happier they were there than not. But IIRC no one was directly hired onto the sniper team, they were internal transfers. Maybe some were job hoppers in the past. But most teams interviewing new outside candidates for FT roles want the same sort of expected stability as everyone else, so of course too frequent job hopping isn't going to be seen positively.
I had a fun experience interviewing someone for a management role, he had previously left the company (after a year or so as a dev and about the same as a freshly transitioned manager) for another, but after maybe a year and a half or so at the other was thinking of coming back to the old one. I can't remember my phrasing but I basically asked him what sort of guarantees (I know I didn't use this word but it captures the desire) he could make that he wouldn't just leave again after a year or so, when this particular position really needed someone invested for at least 3 years. His answer was something like a pretty floaty "we never know what life will throw at us", which sure, there are no real guarantees here, but still, you could at least try and make me believe, like demonstrating a passion for the underlying product space or something, or heck even a simple mercenary view of trying to get a lot more RSUs that don't vest after that many years would be acceptable to me (if not others). Anyway, I recommended against him, for that and other reasons.
> There was even a cool "sniper team" that would move around to assist different teams every few months.
Were they actually good? I could see this being an absolute fly-by wharbargle.
Were they actually good? I could see this being an absolute fly-by wharbargle.
I never heard complaints, and my own experience was with the stuff they were wrapping up for my team just as I was hired. It was solid and we extended it further about a year later on our own without issue. (Organized code, including some plsql, tests, and some useful docs were left behind.) I could see the concept going south somewhere else though especially if they're more thrust upon teams that don't want them by upper management.
I think both too much tenure and too little are both "warning signs". Nine times out of ten I'm going to prefer the two year per role candidate to the 20 years at the same enterprise dev shop candidates (who I've universally had the worst experiences with). But if they can't manage at least a year per engagement? That's a bit too active for me generally. I have more confidence in my ability to build an environment that'll encourage people to stay than I have in my ability to rehabilitate a developer with twenty years of ingrained bad habits because they've only seen how one (likely dysfunctional) environment operates.
There are costs to onboarding a new employee (not just in money, but also in time and attention from more-tenured teammates, finding good "starter" tickets for them to work on, longer standups, interviewing their replacement after they leave, etc)
For pretty much any team, there's some ramp-up time where a new employee won't be contributing much and may be taking more time/attention from your experienced employees and manager. (explaining how the system works, code reviews, helping debug why something's not working, etc etc) There's some break-even tenure below which it's a net loss for a team to have hired someone. It'll be different for each team and also different for each new-hire. Maybe it's only a couple days, or maybe it's 6+ months. Either way, managers should at least be aware of this when making hiring decisions. (exception: unless they're at a cushy enough gig where there's not much/any pressure to deliver)
For pretty much any team, there's some ramp-up time where a new employee won't be contributing much and may be taking more time/attention from your experienced employees and manager. (explaining how the system works, code reviews, helping debug why something's not working, etc etc) There's some break-even tenure below which it's a net loss for a team to have hired someone. It'll be different for each team and also different for each new-hire. Maybe it's only a couple days, or maybe it's 6+ months. Either way, managers should at least be aware of this when making hiring decisions. (exception: unless they're at a cushy enough gig where there's not much/any pressure to deliver)
> (exception: unless they're at a cushy enough gig where there's not much/any pressure to deliver)
Another exception: when the applicant is actually passing able/willing interviews.
Do you really think a good engineer would leave willy-nilly a good place to work? I've yet to see a good software engineer who loves interviewing for the process of it.
Another exception: when the applicant is actually passing able/willing interviews.
Do you really think a good engineer would leave willy-nilly a good place to work? I've yet to see a good software engineer who loves interviewing for the process of it.
> Do you really think a good engineer would leave willy-nilly a good place to work?
No. Which is precisely why, via contrapositive, a string of short stints is a relevant signal that the person might not be a good engineer.
No. Which is precisely why, via contrapositive, a string of short stints is a relevant signal that the person might not be a good engineer.
I agree about the cost of hiring and on boarding time but you should know by three months if it is going to work out.
There's also a cost to not having the proper head count
There's also a cost to not having the proper head count
On the contrary, the default position is and should be that job hopping is a negative, and it should be assumed the job hopping is a red flag. What you should want is a company that says job hopping is fine, basically being a consultant. It sounds like you're not asking good questions in an interview to find if a company is a cultural fit, interviews are a two way street after all.
That's easy. Outsourcing companies don't care too much, as they lease your body to the highest bidder and don't care too much about the results.
Any other company will prefer someone, who will stay longer, because for 3 months or more (more complex product they have, longer time), you're more cost, than asset, because you don't know the product and need some level of babysitting.
Any other company will prefer someone, who will stay longer, because for 3 months or more (more complex product they have, longer time), you're more cost, than asset, because you don't know the product and need some level of babysitting.
I think most companies are pretty amenable (that is, a lot seem to fall into the trap) of having an employee who becomes rather irreplaceable. Maybe it's the guy who makes himself responsible for the build infrastructure for the rest of the thousands of engineers, or maybe it's the guy who hacked up hundreds of thousands of lines of code years ago when the company was still smallish and which still mostly work but is now mostly on architecture (days filled with meetings with varied teams) unless something tricky is wrong and you're really glad he can still code and debug his legacy mess. It is harder at larger companies, especially because those will tend to have a higher density of managers who actively look for bus-factor-1 problems to try and ameliorate, but still.
I think it's funny how at the large companies there's an inversion to your "lone wolf" claim somewhere in the promotion pipeline where to get to the next level you're supposed to show leadership and ownership of some core feature domains, you'll be working on basically one bigger thing for months at a time. Sure, technically the "team" owns it, and a few other members may have implemented some of the simpler pieces, or done QE work on it, and you probably had to have meetings with other teams about aspects of it, but everyone knows whose baby it really is and who is best positioned to add new code or debug existing code. When your team is pretty stable for enough years (quite a nice experience) everyone on the team has at least one baby + eventually passable familiarity with everyone else's; not without good reason, it's a pretty powerful way of organizing devs who don't need constant hand holding. It's not as lone wolf as literally working by yourself on your own company, but it's not like you're drowning in collaboration. As people inevitably drop out, there's often an attempt to transfer knowledge formally, because of course there are things that the person leaving knows about their special areas that are not well understood by the rest of the team or company. Companies and teams where there really is a sense of full shared ownership and common almost equal understanding of things are pretty rare, and I would bet tend to be on the smaller side.
I think it's funny how at the large companies there's an inversion to your "lone wolf" claim somewhere in the promotion pipeline where to get to the next level you're supposed to show leadership and ownership of some core feature domains, you'll be working on basically one bigger thing for months at a time. Sure, technically the "team" owns it, and a few other members may have implemented some of the simpler pieces, or done QE work on it, and you probably had to have meetings with other teams about aspects of it, but everyone knows whose baby it really is and who is best positioned to add new code or debug existing code. When your team is pretty stable for enough years (quite a nice experience) everyone on the team has at least one baby + eventually passable familiarity with everyone else's; not without good reason, it's a pretty powerful way of organizing devs who don't need constant hand holding. It's not as lone wolf as literally working by yourself on your own company, but it's not like you're drowning in collaboration. As people inevitably drop out, there's often an attempt to transfer knowledge formally, because of course there are things that the person leaving knows about their special areas that are not well understood by the rest of the team or company. Companies and teams where there really is a sense of full shared ownership and common almost equal understanding of things are pretty rare, and I would bet tend to be on the smaller side.
There is absolutely a perverse obsession with the opposite and the narrative of "lone wolves/mercenaries are bad" needs to die already.
I've never seen a company that hasn't had severe problems getting someone else in the domain of a person who left. The problem isn't an asocial person in an important position. It is lack of documentation or at least a paper trail. Various reasons why this could be, but I find the people overly eager to communicate to be the worst offenders of this, not the asocial ones. Personality doesn't magically solve strategy and lack of litmus tests.
And funnily enough, these problems form in domains that are considered solved, too. Everyone writes their own half-attempt without looking at what big corps are already doing. The domain itself is never the difficult part.
I've never seen a company that hasn't had severe problems getting someone else in the domain of a person who left. The problem isn't an asocial person in an important position. It is lack of documentation or at least a paper trail. Various reasons why this could be, but I find the people overly eager to communicate to be the worst offenders of this, not the asocial ones. Personality doesn't magically solve strategy and lack of litmus tests.
And funnily enough, these problems form in domains that are considered solved, too. Everyone writes their own half-attempt without looking at what big corps are already doing. The domain itself is never the difficult part.
Couldn't agree more. Also, the worst fucking docs of all time come out of consulting teams where like 8 people have a superficial understanding of the system and are all trying to collaboratively document everything. They just produce reams of unstructured nonsense that has no actual value whatsoever.
99% of the teams that think they have some decent bus factor actually just have bus factor 0 and survive by lighting piles of money on fire with an army of 0.01xers with high turnover and no chance for anyone to ramp.
Give me a single handover .txt file from a lone wolf any day of the week. In fact, that's the exact type of person I want to work with. Fuck "teamwork™" and fuck bus factor.
99% of the teams that think they have some decent bus factor actually just have bus factor 0 and survive by lighting piles of money on fire with an army of 0.01xers with high turnover and no chance for anyone to ramp.
Give me a single handover .txt file from a lone wolf any day of the week. In fact, that's the exact type of person I want to work with. Fuck "teamwork™" and fuck bus factor.
It is crazy. We hear these stories all the time. We have clear examples of good and bad documentation. Yet in the same breath, we condemn loners who neither solve nor worsen the problem by default, and praise the social butterflies omnipresent in places with these symptoms present.
Nothing is going to substitute throwing a few individuals with zero domain knowledge at your code/docs and seeing if they grasp enough. Certainly not some talking which fades away in 10 minutes.
Nothing is going to substitute throwing a few individuals with zero domain knowledge at your code/docs and seeing if they grasp enough. Certainly not some talking which fades away in 10 minutes.
Just because I don't like to work on your product does not mean I don't like working in a team.
Although for people like you, I think "team player" means "a guy who does what I tell him to do".
Although for people like you, I think "team player" means "a guy who does what I tell him to do".
It seems like a pretty common trope for short tenure advocates to talk in terms of me-vs-them. In reality, the world is vast, companies and work arrangements vary a lot and and even if you're shortlisted as having "red flags" by some, others will still take you in.
At least when I see candidates worried about how short stints will look on their resume, this much context suffices to be said.
Where it gets weird is when you see people on r/cscareerquestions or whatever advocating for a series of short tenure stints as a "hack" to get into high pay positions quickly. The problem is that anyone that has success with this strategy is a living example of survivorship bias, and the seemingly "easy-ness" of the strategy gets a lot of mind space among young highly impressionable audiences, when in reality, if you want to be career-growth focused, you typically do need at least some long tenure stints to gain experience w/ longer term responsibilities and relationships. I.e. you don't see director-level people advocating for quick job hopping for a reason.
At least when I see candidates worried about how short stints will look on their resume, this much context suffices to be said.
Where it gets weird is when you see people on r/cscareerquestions or whatever advocating for a series of short tenure stints as a "hack" to get into high pay positions quickly. The problem is that anyone that has success with this strategy is a living example of survivorship bias, and the seemingly "easy-ness" of the strategy gets a lot of mind space among young highly impressionable audiences, when in reality, if you want to be career-growth focused, you typically do need at least some long tenure stints to gain experience w/ longer term responsibilities and relationships. I.e. you don't see director-level people advocating for quick job hopping for a reason.
> Where it gets weird is when you see people on r/cscareerquestions or whatever advocating for a series of short tenure stints as a "hack" to get into high pay positions quickly. The problem is that anyone that has success with this strategy is a living example of survivorship bias
I also check /r/cscareerquestions from time to time. It has a strong "blind leading the blind" vibe lately, wherein inexperienced people are just echoing things back and forth to each other. A lot of the advice tends to be what people want to hear, not what actually mirrors reality.
The hiring boom over the past few years has also severely skewed the results. A lot of the junior devs who recently entered the industry know nothing other than the crazy hiring boom times of 2020 to early 2022. They preach about how easy it is to find a job, but their only real data point was a single job search experience during a very anomalous time.
I also check /r/cscareerquestions from time to time. It has a strong "blind leading the blind" vibe lately, wherein inexperienced people are just echoing things back and forth to each other. A lot of the advice tends to be what people want to hear, not what actually mirrors reality.
The hiring boom over the past few years has also severely skewed the results. A lot of the junior devs who recently entered the industry know nothing other than the crazy hiring boom times of 2020 to early 2022. They preach about how easy it is to find a job, but their only real data point was a single job search experience during a very anomalous time.
> ...advocating for a series of short tenure stints as a "hack" to get into high pay positions quickly.
I see these job hoppers coming from a mile away. The worst part is the rampant "what is absolute least, gaming min-maxing I can get away with to nab my metrics" mindset they rampantly infuse some of their co-workers with.
One way to counter them is to meticulously observe and record accomplishments of everyone and toot everyone's horn to management. This drowns out the Short-Timer Sam's key strategy of success bombing management and they either see the light and stop their shortcuts rampancy (never seen it happen, but I'm sure miracles are out there) or leave because they don't nab the promotion they're angling for by their internal deadline before they head for the next job.
I see these job hoppers coming from a mile away. The worst part is the rampant "what is absolute least, gaming min-maxing I can get away with to nab my metrics" mindset they rampantly infuse some of their co-workers with.
One way to counter them is to meticulously observe and record accomplishments of everyone and toot everyone's horn to management. This drowns out the Short-Timer Sam's key strategy of success bombing management and they either see the light and stop their shortcuts rampancy (never seen it happen, but I'm sure miracles are out there) or leave because they don't nab the promotion they're angling for by their internal deadline before they head for the next job.
Nah, it's not incompatible. I do as well want to work on my own projects on my own terms and I couldn't care less about my employers' product. At the same time I know how to play well as part of a team and get paid for it. It's just two different hats I wear at different times of the day (e.g., 9-5 hat is "team player, let's be nice", 5-8 hat is "let's do something that actually makes sense not like that stupid project at work")
> If the bottom line is that you hate being an employee, then it seems that being suspicious of your resume would be the correct call.
The other day I was reading a post about what specialized tooling, if any, ADHD devs used. Someone replied that they had to accept the fact that they could only work contracts because they could work on them on their own schedule.
There are plenty of reasons to hate being an employee. But someone who hates being an employee can nevertheless be a better employee than someone who doesn't.
The conception of culture in the workplace needs to die; taken to the desert and shot. You go to work to get paid. You get paid because you do work. Whether or not you hate it or love it shouldn't matter as long as those conditions are met to the satisfaction of both parties.
The other day I was reading a post about what specialized tooling, if any, ADHD devs used. Someone replied that they had to accept the fact that they could only work contracts because they could work on them on their own schedule.
There are plenty of reasons to hate being an employee. But someone who hates being an employee can nevertheless be a better employee than someone who doesn't.
The conception of culture in the workplace needs to die; taken to the desert and shot. You go to work to get paid. You get paid because you do work. Whether or not you hate it or love it shouldn't matter as long as those conditions are met to the satisfaction of both parties.
> The conception of culture in the workplace needs to die
Work culture exists whether you want to believe in it or not. If you don't, then you're letting the culture be dictated Lord of the Flies style. I've worked across a lot of domains and a lot of very large companies during my time working in technology and the most obvious differentiator between successful IT/dev orgs and unsuccessful ones is most often attributed to the work / dev culture. This is especially true when trying to change / influence organizations. The number one thing you have to overcome is culture. Why doesn't agile work? Why doesn't DevOps deliver like promised? Why can't the org successfully shift from a project based delivery to a product based delivery method? More often than not it's due to trying to implement changes without addressing team culture issues.
Technology is mostly easy if you can get cross organizational alignment, but you can't do that without addressing culture.
Work culture exists whether you want to believe in it or not. If you don't, then you're letting the culture be dictated Lord of the Flies style. I've worked across a lot of domains and a lot of very large companies during my time working in technology and the most obvious differentiator between successful IT/dev orgs and unsuccessful ones is most often attributed to the work / dev culture. This is especially true when trying to change / influence organizations. The number one thing you have to overcome is culture. Why doesn't agile work? Why doesn't DevOps deliver like promised? Why can't the org successfully shift from a project based delivery to a product based delivery method? More often than not it's due to trying to implement changes without addressing team culture issues.
Technology is mostly easy if you can get cross organizational alignment, but you can't do that without addressing culture.
Sure, if there's an issue that's actively harmful or prevents stuff getting done, it would make no sense to let it go unaddressed. But having managers trying to optimize culture leads to open plan desks and mandatory office parties - shit that might improve the cohesion of the team, sure, but if your 10x left because they don't like it, then it's not entirely focused on productivity.
> If you don't, then you're letting the culture be dictated Lord of the Flies style.
Moreover this is implying that you think of your team as a bunch of children stuck on an island. I'd have more faith in professional adults to do their job. Hopefully, nobody is under the illusion that money comes out of the office printer.
Honestly, I'd want to hire someone who hates being an employee more than someone who doesn't. Then, I'd at least know that they're under no illusions, and smart enough to know that they'll have to work.
> If you don't, then you're letting the culture be dictated Lord of the Flies style.
Moreover this is implying that you think of your team as a bunch of children stuck on an island. I'd have more faith in professional adults to do their job. Hopefully, nobody is under the illusion that money comes out of the office printer.
Honestly, I'd want to hire someone who hates being an employee more than someone who doesn't. Then, I'd at least know that they're under no illusions, and smart enough to know that they'll have to work.
The reality of the matter is this: almost all demands are flexible depending on the market. Today's 'red flag' is tomorrow's 'not the worst'.
Almost none of the red flags have an academic or scientific basis. Almost all of it is rationality with a thousand caveats.
Almost none of the red flags have an academic or scientific basis. Almost all of it is rationality with a thousand caveats.
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> and frankly I can’t understand people whose goal in life is [to find stable employment]
I grew up lower middle class - first to graduate college in my family. Dad could never hold down a job for long. It was a very pressing need for me, for a long time, and still is, to be able to keep gainful employment.
I’m at a stage in my career now where I should not worry about that - I’m skilled enough that if I put in the 3-6 months of leetcode practice I can probably land whatever job I really want. So therefore, my skill and career experience should theoretically land me “stability” and should no longer be the goal - but I resonate with folks that do share that goal. I think upbringing and seeing others not be able to hold a job, let alone a dream job, brings out some conservative sides to folks.
I don’t know your story, but most of my friends that did startups for a long while out of college were almost all from wealthy families. That just never really felt like an option for me.
I grew up lower middle class - first to graduate college in my family. Dad could never hold down a job for long. It was a very pressing need for me, for a long time, and still is, to be able to keep gainful employment.
I’m at a stage in my career now where I should not worry about that - I’m skilled enough that if I put in the 3-6 months of leetcode practice I can probably land whatever job I really want. So therefore, my skill and career experience should theoretically land me “stability” and should no longer be the goal - but I resonate with folks that do share that goal. I think upbringing and seeing others not be able to hold a job, let alone a dream job, brings out some conservative sides to folks.
I don’t know your story, but most of my friends that did startups for a long while out of college were almost all from wealthy families. That just never really felt like an option for me.
> I’m skilled enough that if I put in the 3-6 months of leetcode practice I can probably land whatever job I really want.
It's a shame that your actual experience doesn't count for much in comparison to wasting 3-6 months of spare time on arbitrary brain teasers. Not a good place for hiring to be.
It's a shame that your actual experience doesn't count for much in comparison to wasting 3-6 months of spare time on arbitrary brain teasers. Not a good place for hiring to be.
TBH if this is your anecdotal experience it is completely opposite to what I've seen. I've seen CS grads that could not code very well, 5 years later make >500k working as Senior SWEs for AirBnb by switching jobs every 1.5-2 years.
My own tech lead left his last two jobs in < 8 months. He's a staff eng now making similar cash. And before my current position the other staff/principal engineers I saw had similar tenures.
My own tech lead left his last two jobs in < 8 months. He's a staff eng now making similar cash. And before my current position the other staff/principal engineers I saw had similar tenures.
Sounds like we need a proper recession
"I hate being an employee. I want to work on my own projects on my own terms." Is there a word for people like this? A philosophy?
I feel like most people either don't care about their work and find meaning in other areas of life, or are invested in playing the corporate game and enjoy being in that environment. If you tell them that you don't want to be an employee at a company, they look at you like you're speaking a foreign language.
The problem is there isn't any identifiable group of people who are like this. It's not "anti-work"; I can work just as hard as or harder than anyone given the right circumstances. It's orthogonal to any specific political view. "Independent" is too broad. "Anti-establishment" is focused on external factors rather than intrinsic motivations. It would be useful to have a term where you could say "I am X" and it would immediately bring up all the right connotations.
I feel like most people either don't care about their work and find meaning in other areas of life, or are invested in playing the corporate game and enjoy being in that environment. If you tell them that you don't want to be an employee at a company, they look at you like you're speaking a foreign language.
The problem is there isn't any identifiable group of people who are like this. It's not "anti-work"; I can work just as hard as or harder than anyone given the right circumstances. It's orthogonal to any specific political view. "Independent" is too broad. "Anti-establishment" is focused on external factors rather than intrinsic motivations. It would be useful to have a term where you could say "I am X" and it would immediately bring up all the right connotations.
That's interesting. I never thought I was in a weird minority. I thought most people hate their jobs but do them anyway because they can't think of an alternative.
Maybe that is true.
Maybe the degree to which I hate being an employee is just much larger than it is for most people?
The problem is with programming it's really hard to leave your job at the office. It's a deep thinking job so it comes with you to bed whether you like it or not.
Jon Blow has previously (8 years ago) left a comment elaborating how working a job robs you of your potential. I have it saved in my favorites. I read it often to remind myself the importance of going independent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789438
There's also this essay by Palladium editor in chief about quitting your job. It was posted a while ago to HN to a mostly negative reception because apparently it's too elitist. It's also one of the pieces I keep re-reading periodically.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/
Maybe that is true.
Maybe the degree to which I hate being an employee is just much larger than it is for most people?
The problem is with programming it's really hard to leave your job at the office. It's a deep thinking job so it comes with you to bed whether you like it or not.
Jon Blow has previously (8 years ago) left a comment elaborating how working a job robs you of your potential. I have it saved in my favorites. I read it often to remind myself the importance of going independent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789438
There's also this essay by Palladium editor in chief about quitting your job. It was posted a while ago to HN to a mostly negative reception because apparently it's too elitist. It's also one of the pieces I keep re-reading periodically.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/
Maybe I was being a bit melodramatic. More realistically, a lot of people hate their job and exist somewhere on a spectrum between accepting it and trying to change it. I just happen to be biased toward making more radical changes when things aren't motivating me.
That Jon Blow comment resonates with me a lot. Definitely saved for future reference.
That Jon Blow comment resonates with me a lot. Definitely saved for future reference.
> I never thought I was in a weird minority. I thought most people hate their jobs but do them anyway because they can't think of an alternative.
That is correct, as reported on countless job satisfaction surveys.
That is correct, as reported on countless job satisfaction surveys.
There is an aspect of ADHD like that, the impossibility to focus on tasks that have not been deemed essential by the brain of the worker.
> "I hate being an employee. I want to work on my own projects on my own terms." Is there a word for people like this? A philosophy?
I think those people are called entrepreneurs :) Seriously, I think the GP would be better suited to found a startup that to apply for corporate jobs.
I think those people are called entrepreneurs :) Seriously, I think the GP would be better suited to found a startup that to apply for corporate jobs.
Nietzschean?
If you hate being an employee, is applying for a full-time job really the best move?
> and frankly I can't understand people whose goal in life is that
Not sure I'd call it a goal in life since most people in tech are in-demand enough to take it for granted, but providing the job has good work-life balance and isn't too stressful it's the best way to work to live. Also, not everyone has the luxury of not needing stable employment
> and frankly I can't understand people whose goal in life is that
Not sure I'd call it a goal in life since most people in tech are in-demand enough to take it for granted, but providing the job has good work-life balance and isn't too stressful it's the best way to work to live. Also, not everyone has the luxury of not needing stable employment
> For one thing, I have relatives that got into the tech scene after me, but rack in much higher salaries than me. I'm not sure what it is, but probably staying in their jobs for more than two years helps.
Interesting perspective, I usually hear the opposite advice.
That it's easier to find a new job that pays more rather than get a raise through your existing job.
I suppose at some point that can have diminishing returns, I imagine particularly in management positions.
Interesting perspective, I usually hear the opposite advice.
That it's easier to find a new job that pays more rather than get a raise through your existing job.
I suppose at some point that can have diminishing returns, I imagine particularly in management positions.
Job hopping can have a high ROI for junior people who enter the industry at the bottom end of the compensation curve. Someone starting at a $60K entry-level job at a small, no-name company generally has no good options for significant salary increases other than changing to another job.
On the other end of the spectrum, someone who joins a Big Tech company right out of college has a lot to gain by staying, learning how the promotion system works, and then working their way upward through the promotion ladder.
I think the job-hopping advice has lost a lot of context after being reduced to a short aphorism. The companies that compensate toward the top end of the curve are actually great places to establish long tenures and move up the comp ladder. The longer you stay, the more allies you have within the company and the more knowledge you have of how the system rewards people.
On the other end of the spectrum, someone who joins a Big Tech company right out of college has a lot to gain by staying, learning how the promotion system works, and then working their way upward through the promotion ladder.
I think the job-hopping advice has lost a lot of context after being reduced to a short aphorism. The companies that compensate toward the top end of the curve are actually great places to establish long tenures and move up the comp ladder. The longer you stay, the more allies you have within the company and the more knowledge you have of how the system rewards people.
> That it's easier to find a new job that pays more rather than get a raise through your existing job.
Yes, but after you have spent 3+ years in your current job.
It also helps to have the ability to put up with all kinds of bullshit - which I don't have.
One time I quit a job because the "boss" talked to me in a bad tone.
Two times I threatened indirectly to leave when someone tried to use their "authority" to talk bullshit to me.
Everytime when the project was setup with complex/confusing maze of docker/k8s scripts, I simply refused to learn their config system because I viewed it as beyond bullshit.
But my relatives who get paid a lot more than me are all just "suffering" this kind of bullshit to keep the job.
Yes, but after you have spent 3+ years in your current job.
It also helps to have the ability to put up with all kinds of bullshit - which I don't have.
One time I quit a job because the "boss" talked to me in a bad tone.
Two times I threatened indirectly to leave when someone tried to use their "authority" to talk bullshit to me.
Everytime when the project was setup with complex/confusing maze of docker/k8s scripts, I simply refused to learn their config system because I viewed it as beyond bullshit.
But my relatives who get paid a lot more than me are all just "suffering" this kind of bullshit to keep the job.
I mean honestly you sound like a pretty difficult person to work with. I wonder if this, rather than job hopping, is what’s limiting your upward mobility. It’s important to be able to learn how to work with things that aren’t perfect, and how to go about making them better or more tolerable. Without learning a tool, you’re criticizing it from a place of ignorance, which makes your criticisms hold less weight.
It’s impossible for everything to be 100% perfect even if you run everything, because you’ll have to deal with your own mistakes from when you lacked context or experience. “Dealing with bullshit” is part of the job, no matter how you slice it.
It’s impossible for everything to be 100% perfect even if you run everything, because you’ll have to deal with your own mistakes from when you lacked context or experience. “Dealing with bullshit” is part of the job, no matter how you slice it.
> I mean honestly you sound like a pretty difficult person to work with. I wonder if this, rather than job hopping, is what’s limiting your upward mobility. It’s important to be able to learn how to work with things that aren’t perfect, and how to go about making them better or more tolerable.
It could go either way for GP. I've seen people that bounced from place to place before finding a 'happy spot'...
In smaller shops it is easy to either be non-insulated from general corporate culture (which can be far better/worse than IT, often worse in smaller orgs) or just have to work with 'that guy' too much.
Large orgs with a good strategy will often try to fit a candidate to a team. Sometimes that means interviews with multiple teams. Sometimes that might mean a group interview with leaders (Yes, this leans on the leader more, so risk might go up.)
Devil's advocate; I have -some- empathy when it comes to terraform infrastructures that are so rigid you are -forced- to deploy thing 1 to an environment, then update thing 2 with some token/IAM you got back from deploying thing 1... A worst of both worlds situation I have encountered (or an analogue of) more than once.
> It’s impossible for everything to be 100% perfect even if you run everything, because you’ll have to deal with your own mistakes from when you lacked context or experience. “Dealing with bullshit” is part of the job, no matter how you slice it.
One more DA: There's bullshit on the level of (1) 'fill out a Capex/Opex Timesheet', (2)'do this task that you know you could do differently now and not have to refactor 1-6 months later, but I want it -this- way', and (3) 'hey we just finished standup and we have a meeting in 10 minutes, I said you were the SME of %ThingYouhaveSecondLeastExperienceOnComparedToTeam% and would help answer questions' or 'hey you didn't invite a BA to an engineer-only meeting. I'm going to invite them anyway and talk to you about it in a passive aggressive tone while you are outside'.
I've done all of the above. I don't mind 2 overall, my answer to 1 is a teeth-grit 'Is there a column to track the time I'm doing the timesheet', 3 is an obvious power-play or sign of toxic corporate culture.
I regret the time I didn't leave over #3. I don't regret the time I did.
It could go either way for GP. I've seen people that bounced from place to place before finding a 'happy spot'...
In smaller shops it is easy to either be non-insulated from general corporate culture (which can be far better/worse than IT, often worse in smaller orgs) or just have to work with 'that guy' too much.
Large orgs with a good strategy will often try to fit a candidate to a team. Sometimes that means interviews with multiple teams. Sometimes that might mean a group interview with leaders (Yes, this leans on the leader more, so risk might go up.)
Devil's advocate; I have -some- empathy when it comes to terraform infrastructures that are so rigid you are -forced- to deploy thing 1 to an environment, then update thing 2 with some token/IAM you got back from deploying thing 1... A worst of both worlds situation I have encountered (or an analogue of) more than once.
> It’s impossible for everything to be 100% perfect even if you run everything, because you’ll have to deal with your own mistakes from when you lacked context or experience. “Dealing with bullshit” is part of the job, no matter how you slice it.
One more DA: There's bullshit on the level of (1) 'fill out a Capex/Opex Timesheet', (2)'do this task that you know you could do differently now and not have to refactor 1-6 months later, but I want it -this- way', and (3) 'hey we just finished standup and we have a meeting in 10 minutes, I said you were the SME of %ThingYouhaveSecondLeastExperienceOnComparedToTeam% and would help answer questions' or 'hey you didn't invite a BA to an engineer-only meeting. I'm going to invite them anyway and talk to you about it in a passive aggressive tone while you are outside'.
I've done all of the above. I don't mind 2 overall, my answer to 1 is a teeth-grit 'Is there a column to track the time I'm doing the timesheet', 3 is an obvious power-play or sign of toxic corporate culture.
I regret the time I didn't leave over #3. I don't regret the time I did.
Oh yeah no question! Things can always be bad enough or the bullshit high enough to be worth leaving, and maybe that’s what GP was talking about. I also hopped around a bit between longer term jobs to find something that fit, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But I think the perspectives of “I won’t put up with anything I don’t like,” and “I refuse to learn anything I don’t enjoy” are pretty toxic ones for a healthy workplace.
I’m currently at my favorite job I’ve ever had in my career: I have autonomy, ownership, smart coworkers, great leadership, and a product I largely built and enjoy working on. But there’s still plenty of bullshit! There’s some that predates me, there’s some that is too far outside my sphere of control for me to bother with, and there’s some that I’ve created accidentally. Living with it and trying to keep the level of bullshit tolerable is an important skill in and of itself I think. Tricky to know when it’s too much and it’s time to leave, but you’ll never know if you never try to stick it out for a bit at least once.
I’m currently at my favorite job I’ve ever had in my career: I have autonomy, ownership, smart coworkers, great leadership, and a product I largely built and enjoy working on. But there’s still plenty of bullshit! There’s some that predates me, there’s some that is too far outside my sphere of control for me to bother with, and there’s some that I’ve created accidentally. Living with it and trying to keep the level of bullshit tolerable is an important skill in and of itself I think. Tricky to know when it’s too much and it’s time to leave, but you’ll never know if you never try to stick it out for a bit at least once.
...hmm.
> Yes, but after you have spent 3+ years in your current job.
Ehhhh... I've seen plenty of colleagues leave after less than that and get raises. I tend to -prefer- to stay somewhere (despite being considered an excellent interviewer at every place I've worked, I'm a terrible interviewee most of the time, perhaps because I try to ignore what I know about interviewing for the sake of fairness.)
> It also helps to have the ability to put up with all kinds of bullshit - which I don't have.
You have to be careful with this. There's some bullshit you have to grit your teeth to depending on the environment, for better or worse it can pay dividends long term. There are some places where the bullshit never ends, but there are other places where it is more a question of 'built trust' (which is often a flawed practice, but IDK what to replace it with.)
It really depends on context, which can sometime be difficult to give.
There are jobs I have grit my teeth at requests can only be politely put as "a waste of the time and talent of me and my colleagues", and most of those more importantly to my work ethos were a complete waste of the company's money.
Usually, at those times, I would go to my mentor. I'd always have a good argument. It's always easier to get someone to pay attention to, at minimum, providing some way to show your idea has merit.
Sometimes, it's showing potential ROI.
Once in a while, it's 'You trust my estimates, right? Here's my estimates.'
There are other examples as well but you get the idea; the unfortunate thing is it does take time to know how long it takes to build karma as well as how fast you burn it. I've worked places where general goodwill was based on 'good vs bad suggestions', I've also worked at places where 'one good thing = 1 submission for a review'. Obviously the latter is not healthy.
> But my relatives who get paid a lot more than me are all just "suffering" this kind of bullshit to keep the job.
For all the emotion that is in this statement, I understand it.
I once switched jobs, from working at (1) a unique shop where I had some drama around some decisions, but working on a unique system that was rare in my lang of choice, to (2) a shop where the first few months of my job was updating addresses on Crystal Reports.
Job 2 paid more, but yeah I was downright miserable there between the waste of talent as well as the level of office politics resulting in a team being blocked for two months before being -allowed- to talk to me for help (I solved the problem in 3ish hours.)
> One time I quit a job because the "boss" talked to me in a bad tone.
I only did this once... well 1.5 times (The .5 time, the boss had done far worse than talk in a bad tone to myself and others, the textbook if not stereotypical case of an emotionally abusive person) but it wasn't the sole or even major reason.
The challenge of course is that between NDAs and a general fear of reprisal, it is very difficult for a person to speak up about a truly shitty employer without risking some form of retaliation. Some of this may be influenced by the fact many shops I've worked at were small enough, even listing my time of employment would be enough to be 'sussed out'. But I feel like unless you are at a very large shop, the subconscious still sees that risk.
Then if you get past -that-, there is a good chance you are fighting signal/noise ratio, especially if the employer goes as far as soliciting employees to write positive glassdoor reviews.
I know that the worst place I worked, would actually try to bait reviewers who left bad reviews into exposing themselves by suggesting they email an address that would go to HR, likely in an attempt to threaten with clauses about public image. They never went as far as to pressure us to post on glassdoor but definitely had sent cues we should talk them up on our social media! [0]
This was also a place that (1) loved using 'non-violent communication' training as a cudgel for managers to use when an employee stepped out of line (I never dealt with it but know others did); (2) non IT employees had a 'closer to jimmy johns than real trade' training payback clause, their normal non-compete covered the true business case, (3) would time bathroom breaks of hourly employees.
And yet I haven't spoken up about them, because the fear of finding me out and being tied up in litigation is too much. Many of the people who are smart enough to see shit employers also know the ROI on speaking up isn't worth it. Those who don't, well...
------
IDK. I don't fault your overall logic and honesty overall, but as you've seen it can impair some upward mobility. I -will- say that sometimes employers don't do a good job at honesty in interviewing processes.
My first real IT job, probably part of the reason I stayed as long as did, they were -very- honest both in interview and first few weeks that that they had -problems- and did a good job of explaining some of them and being clear (and followed through) on the idea that those problems did not reflect poorly on me or other devs. [1]
It's -far- more palatable than being fed a half-truth or overly-sugared statement about the state of things. The more I know about the shitshow I'm walking into, the more quickly I can be impactful on whatever level the storm allows.
[0] - Tangent, I understand that some companies now pressure/require profile updates on certain websites. I think this is a disgusting practice unless it is limited to making sure there 'opinions do not (necessarily) represent that of my employer'
[1] - I need to restate. This level of honesty and trust was something I've only fully encountered one (1.5?) other time(2) in my career, and it's something I've missed in every job that didn't gave it. The managers both places were truly amazing. (The half-point is for a gig where honestly I trusted the development manager and he was an amazing person, but I could not trust that he could protect me from the rest of the org and it's structure. My apologies and regrets to him.)
> Yes, but after you have spent 3+ years in your current job.
Ehhhh... I've seen plenty of colleagues leave after less than that and get raises. I tend to -prefer- to stay somewhere (despite being considered an excellent interviewer at every place I've worked, I'm a terrible interviewee most of the time, perhaps because I try to ignore what I know about interviewing for the sake of fairness.)
> It also helps to have the ability to put up with all kinds of bullshit - which I don't have.
You have to be careful with this. There's some bullshit you have to grit your teeth to depending on the environment, for better or worse it can pay dividends long term. There are some places where the bullshit never ends, but there are other places where it is more a question of 'built trust' (which is often a flawed practice, but IDK what to replace it with.)
It really depends on context, which can sometime be difficult to give.
There are jobs I have grit my teeth at requests can only be politely put as "a waste of the time and talent of me and my colleagues", and most of those more importantly to my work ethos were a complete waste of the company's money.
Usually, at those times, I would go to my mentor. I'd always have a good argument. It's always easier to get someone to pay attention to, at minimum, providing some way to show your idea has merit.
Sometimes, it's showing potential ROI.
Once in a while, it's 'You trust my estimates, right? Here's my estimates.'
There are other examples as well but you get the idea; the unfortunate thing is it does take time to know how long it takes to build karma as well as how fast you burn it. I've worked places where general goodwill was based on 'good vs bad suggestions', I've also worked at places where 'one good thing = 1 submission for a review'. Obviously the latter is not healthy.
> But my relatives who get paid a lot more than me are all just "suffering" this kind of bullshit to keep the job.
For all the emotion that is in this statement, I understand it.
I once switched jobs, from working at (1) a unique shop where I had some drama around some decisions, but working on a unique system that was rare in my lang of choice, to (2) a shop where the first few months of my job was updating addresses on Crystal Reports.
Job 2 paid more, but yeah I was downright miserable there between the waste of talent as well as the level of office politics resulting in a team being blocked for two months before being -allowed- to talk to me for help (I solved the problem in 3ish hours.)
> One time I quit a job because the "boss" talked to me in a bad tone.
I only did this once... well 1.5 times (The .5 time, the boss had done far worse than talk in a bad tone to myself and others, the textbook if not stereotypical case of an emotionally abusive person) but it wasn't the sole or even major reason.
The challenge of course is that between NDAs and a general fear of reprisal, it is very difficult for a person to speak up about a truly shitty employer without risking some form of retaliation. Some of this may be influenced by the fact many shops I've worked at were small enough, even listing my time of employment would be enough to be 'sussed out'. But I feel like unless you are at a very large shop, the subconscious still sees that risk.
Then if you get past -that-, there is a good chance you are fighting signal/noise ratio, especially if the employer goes as far as soliciting employees to write positive glassdoor reviews.
I know that the worst place I worked, would actually try to bait reviewers who left bad reviews into exposing themselves by suggesting they email an address that would go to HR, likely in an attempt to threaten with clauses about public image. They never went as far as to pressure us to post on glassdoor but definitely had sent cues we should talk them up on our social media! [0]
This was also a place that (1) loved using 'non-violent communication' training as a cudgel for managers to use when an employee stepped out of line (I never dealt with it but know others did); (2) non IT employees had a 'closer to jimmy johns than real trade' training payback clause, their normal non-compete covered the true business case, (3) would time bathroom breaks of hourly employees.
And yet I haven't spoken up about them, because the fear of finding me out and being tied up in litigation is too much. Many of the people who are smart enough to see shit employers also know the ROI on speaking up isn't worth it. Those who don't, well...
------
IDK. I don't fault your overall logic and honesty overall, but as you've seen it can impair some upward mobility. I -will- say that sometimes employers don't do a good job at honesty in interviewing processes.
My first real IT job, probably part of the reason I stayed as long as did, they were -very- honest both in interview and first few weeks that that they had -problems- and did a good job of explaining some of them and being clear (and followed through) on the idea that those problems did not reflect poorly on me or other devs. [1]
It's -far- more palatable than being fed a half-truth or overly-sugared statement about the state of things. The more I know about the shitshow I'm walking into, the more quickly I can be impactful on whatever level the storm allows.
[0] - Tangent, I understand that some companies now pressure/require profile updates on certain websites. I think this is a disgusting practice unless it is limited to making sure there 'opinions do not (necessarily) represent that of my employer'
[1] - I need to restate. This level of honesty and trust was something I've only fully encountered one (1.5?) other time(2) in my career, and it's something I've missed in every job that didn't gave it. The managers both places were truly amazing. (The half-point is for a gig where honestly I trusted the development manager and he was an amazing person, but I could not trust that he could protect me from the rest of the org and it's structure. My apologies and regrets to him.)
> It comes down to this: I hate being an employee. I want to work on my own projects on my own terms. This is the only way I can find work that is worth doing.
Sounds familiar: after mild insuccess in academia I found a permanent job but quitted after 4 months. Didn't help that I was a not very well paid consultant with long commutation time. The job was easy but boring. I don't get how many people are able to endure this.
Sounds familiar: after mild insuccess in academia I found a permanent job but quitted after 4 months. Didn't help that I was a not very well paid consultant with long commutation time. The job was easy but boring. I don't get how many people are able to endure this.
I hated being an employee too, but I found value in suffering the long game by focusing on TC (total compensation) to maximize my knowledge, skills, and war chest to start a business of my own.
Yea eventually that is the only path. Although I think you overestimate what is required (financially) to start an independent business. If you are single and you have funds to last you 6 months, you are probably good to do.
An argument for going deep on a career is that you can build relationships built on trust which let you climb the TC hierarchy. This then accelerates the warchest accumulation, and I'm looking ahead as a married man with decades available.
Depends heavily on what type of company we're talking about.
What type of biz did you start
First, I'm building out my dream infrastructure platform.
https://www.adama-platform.com/
This is going to take a few years to mature. While it matures, I'm spending next year improving my UX skills and building a WYSIWYG editor for board games.
My aspiration is to ship a single online board game next year, and then I'll open it up as a "roblox for board games"
I'm doing this solo for a variety of reasons.
https://www.adama-platform.com/
This is going to take a few years to mature. While it matures, I'm spending next year improving my UX skills and building a WYSIWYG editor for board games.
My aspiration is to ship a single online board game next year, and then I'll open it up as a "roblox for board games"
I'm doing this solo for a variety of reasons.
Just become a contractor. Sounds ideal for your mentality.
Strongly agree. When you feel like the combination of administrative hassle and/or work content no longer fits you, it is trivial to just wrap up the current work cleanly (as mentioned above) and just move onto another, more appealing project.
The nice side effect of being a contractor is that your CV now looks like you have been in the same position for 10 years instead of a series of 2 year stints.
I have done this and always worked hard to help the team succeed. Later, when I decided to try working for a couple of large companies, I was stunned to be treated as "you work in my organization and will follow my every whim".
One example is attending endless pointless meetings waiting for the client to decide what spec they want, just because the manager wants to everyone on the team to be present (and silent). As a contractor, it becomes quite easy to say "it looks like I am not adding much to your project until the project spec gets settled. Please let me know when you are ready to implement (or have more detailed questions that you need to know to flesh out the spec) and I will be happy to help anytime". In my experience, it is quite common that they will have hashed out the requirements and be ready to start work after 12 months or so and were happy to talk then.
The nice side effect of being a contractor is that your CV now looks like you have been in the same position for 10 years instead of a series of 2 year stints.
I have done this and always worked hard to help the team succeed. Later, when I decided to try working for a couple of large companies, I was stunned to be treated as "you work in my organization and will follow my every whim".
One example is attending endless pointless meetings waiting for the client to decide what spec they want, just because the manager wants to everyone on the team to be present (and silent). As a contractor, it becomes quite easy to say "it looks like I am not adding much to your project until the project spec gets settled. Please let me know when you are ready to implement (or have more detailed questions that you need to know to flesh out the spec) and I will be happy to help anytime". In my experience, it is quite common that they will have hashed out the requirements and be ready to start work after 12 months or so and were happy to talk then.
> The nice side effect of being a contractor is that your CV now looks like you have been in the same position for 10 years instead of a series of 2 year stints.
Can't you do this with W2 work too? "Oh, that was all private consulting work. No sorry, I'm not able to tell you who I was consulting."
Can't you do this with W2 work too? "Oh, that was all private consulting work. No sorry, I'm not able to tell you who I was consulting."
that's effectively what i did, but i listed all stints as if they were jobs, and my CV is rather lengthy as a result. some of them were contracts, some where were actual employment. we used whatever form was more convenient. sometimes employment was necessary for visa purposes. in the end i don't think it matters. consulting is consulting, and i may very well share who i was consulting for, it's still different from having a long term job. as a hiring manager i would still ask: "you have been consulting for the last 10 years, why are you looking for employment now?"
the transition from independent consulting to long term employment is just as questionable as the one from job-hopping to long term employment. you'd have to be working as an employee for the same consulting company for multiple years to give the impression that you are willing to stick with the same employer for a longer period.
the transition from independent consulting to long term employment is just as questionable as the one from job-hopping to long term employment. you'd have to be working as an employee for the same consulting company for multiple years to give the impression that you are willing to stick with the same employer for a longer period.
> the transition from independent consulting to long term employment is just as questionable as the one from job-hopping to long term employment
This is very easy to explain. Contracting is inherently a less stable way to make a living, and many contractors return to normal employment when they decide that they want the extra stability back. Perhaps they just want to reduce the stress, or maybe their home-life changed for some reason…
This is very easy to explain. Contracting is inherently a less stable way to make a living, and many contractors return to normal employment when they decide that they want the extra stability back. Perhaps they just want to reduce the stress, or maybe their home-life changed for some reason…
oh right, that's a good point. getting older, having a family and wanting to settle down is a good explanation for wanting a stable job after years of work on short term projects.
I think you're underselling yourself/your ability to sell the story.
Up until my current employer, I couldn't hold a place more than three years. I'd get bored, my edges would fit the shape of the company, and I just couldn't move.
I did this... at least a dozen times? It's come up surprisingly little!
Whenever it did, I'd usually say the kind of trite things you'd expect from an early 20-something. "I want new opportunities to grow", whatever.
I've had more offers (and turned many away) than outright rejections.
I don't think hopping is perceived that poorly, but there's probably a rather severe grade for someone averaging say, less than a year compared to two or three.
However, this was before the pandemic and the relationship between worker/employer seems more strained now...
Up until my current employer, I couldn't hold a place more than three years. I'd get bored, my edges would fit the shape of the company, and I just couldn't move.
I did this... at least a dozen times? It's come up surprisingly little!
Whenever it did, I'd usually say the kind of trite things you'd expect from an early 20-something. "I want new opportunities to grow", whatever.
I've had more offers (and turned many away) than outright rejections.
I don't think hopping is perceived that poorly, but there's probably a rather severe grade for someone averaging say, less than a year compared to two or three.
However, this was before the pandemic and the relationship between worker/employer seems more strained now...
>>It comes down to this: I hate being an employee.
Why should anybody hire you to do a thing, you hate doing it?
Why should anybody hire you to do a thing, you hate doing it?
I’m not speaking for myself on this one, but don’t most people profess to hate their jobs? I’ve met very few who love working.
Given the choice though, between someone who loves their job and someone who simply tolerates it (because they hate being told what the priority is): then most people will choose the former.
Personally I am similar to the parent, I have a strong anti-authoritarian streak and I work hard to curb it; what helps me is trying to maintain an open dialogue with my managers and try to get on board with how they prioritise so that I'm invested in solving the same problems as they are.
Being equals in my own mind helps me curb my anti-authoritarian tendencies.
Personally I am similar to the parent, I have a strong anti-authoritarian streak and I work hard to curb it; what helps me is trying to maintain an open dialogue with my managers and try to get on board with how they prioritise so that I'm invested in solving the same problems as they are.
Being equals in my own mind helps me curb my anti-authoritarian tendencies.
Did I say they should?
i feel you
but the obvious answer is: because the alternatives are worse
but the obvious answer is: because the alternatives are worse
> For me, that was never my goal in life (and frankly I can't understand people whose goal in life is that).
That's unfortunate. Unless you're already rich, finding stable employment that pays well and reliably is an important goal to have. The opposite would be volatility, and that's not really good for much. There's something said against keeping the exact same job for 5-10 years perhaps, but securing a reliable is the only thing I care about when I'm an employee or contractor. Tech doesn't really have much virtue when you don't have that.
That's unfortunate. Unless you're already rich, finding stable employment that pays well and reliably is an important goal to have. The opposite would be volatility, and that's not really good for much. There's something said against keeping the exact same job for 5-10 years perhaps, but securing a reliable is the only thing I care about when I'm an employee or contractor. Tech doesn't really have much virtue when you don't have that.
> finding stable employment that pays well and reliably is an important goal to have
This is just your opinion and temperament.
This is just your opinion and temperament.
Because I'm not already rich. Instead, I could seek to spend the majority of my time working on something that may or may not actually pay for my rent, but why would I? Not to say that I wouldn't work for a startup, but if that startup can't pay me a sustainable income, they can get fucked.
I'm not rich. I didn't grow up rich. It has nothing to do with growing up rich.
I know people who are not rich, have held the same job for 10+ years, and think it's very important.
This is my ideology: a bird does not feel safety from being on a sturdy branch, but from his self belief that he can always fly to a new branch at any time.
I know people who are not rich, have held the same job for 10+ years, and think it's very important.
This is my ideology: a bird does not feel safety from being on a sturdy branch, but from his self belief that he can always fly to a new branch at any time.
> This is my ideology: a bird does not feel safety from being on a sturdy branch, but from his self belief that he can always fly to a new branch at any time.
and maybe that's always been true for you, which is an aspect of being, if not rich, certainly quite fortunate in some way. I felt that way when I was 22, but I had a naive view of the market and my own place in it. There will very likely be a time where that's not true, but if you don't believe that, then the smart move would be to buy the most expensive house you can with debt; you'll never miss me a payment.
Getting new jobs has never been easy for me, and it's getting harder every year, because of ludicrous hiring processes and not choosing to live in any arbitrary forest with flimsy branches.
The problem as well with the analogy is that you'd be stupid to intentionally choose to work for companies that can't pay you, if you need to be paid. It's more likely that you can weather this if you've already been paid, and therefore it's more wise to jump from flimsy branch to sturdy branch until you feel like the risk of the flimsy branch is tolerable.
Therefore, unless I have hundreds of thousands of dollars lined up, I won't be quitting my job before looking for a new one, and that new one will be scrutinized heavily to ensure it can hold my weight.
and maybe that's always been true for you, which is an aspect of being, if not rich, certainly quite fortunate in some way. I felt that way when I was 22, but I had a naive view of the market and my own place in it. There will very likely be a time where that's not true, but if you don't believe that, then the smart move would be to buy the most expensive house you can with debt; you'll never miss me a payment.
Getting new jobs has never been easy for me, and it's getting harder every year, because of ludicrous hiring processes and not choosing to live in any arbitrary forest with flimsy branches.
The problem as well with the analogy is that you'd be stupid to intentionally choose to work for companies that can't pay you, if you need to be paid. It's more likely that you can weather this if you've already been paid, and therefore it's more wise to jump from flimsy branch to sturdy branch until you feel like the risk of the flimsy branch is tolerable.
Therefore, unless I have hundreds of thousands of dollars lined up, I won't be quitting my job before looking for a new one, and that new one will be scrutinized heavily to ensure it can hold my weight.
> maybe that's always been true for you, which is an aspect of being, if not rich, certainly quite fortunate in some way
No it's not. You're thinking from your perspective, with your own mindset, about when you would be comfortable switching jobs.
I've switched jobs with as little as $10k saved up. I've even gone literally broke one time and had to borrow some money from relatives.
It's a mindset, not a material condition.
You could be filthy rich (> $150k in savings) and still be scared to death about being fired.
No it's not. You're thinking from your perspective, with your own mindset, about when you would be comfortable switching jobs.
I've switched jobs with as little as $10k saved up. I've even gone literally broke one time and had to borrow some money from relatives.
It's a mindset, not a material condition.
You could be filthy rich (> $150k in savings) and still be scared to death about being fired.
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> I want to work on my own projects on my own terms. This is the only way I can find work that is worth doing.
Worth doing in what sense? Not in the capitalist sense of your work being worth at least your compensation. Maybe you mean "worth it to you, subjectively", but if so I don't understand what information is in the second sentence but not the first. And if you mean it in terms of social good, maybe if you have very unusual values? It can't be a matter of technical challenge; there are plenty of hard jobs out there.
I've spent most of my career in big tech, and I've definitely been frustrated when I've had projects that I worked on canceled. That work obviously wasn't worth doing, in hindsight, except that I still got paid.
But I've also had roles where I had meaningful positive impact on customers and on the business, and I don't think my situation was particularly unusual.
Worth doing in what sense? Not in the capitalist sense of your work being worth at least your compensation. Maybe you mean "worth it to you, subjectively", but if so I don't understand what information is in the second sentence but not the first. And if you mean it in terms of social good, maybe if you have very unusual values? It can't be a matter of technical challenge; there are plenty of hard jobs out there.
I've spent most of my career in big tech, and I've definitely been frustrated when I've had projects that I worked on canceled. That work obviously wasn't worth doing, in hindsight, except that I still got paid.
But I've also had roles where I had meaningful positive impact on customers and on the business, and I don't think my situation was particularly unusual.
Worth doing as in, I can look back 10 years later and be proud of what I did. That the work had meaning beyound getting a paycheck.
> And if you mean it in terms of social good, maybe if you have very unusual values?
"Social Good". I don't like terms like this. In the west this term is often conflated with leftist values. I'm mostly concerned with technical excellence and making products that provide some value to end users.
These two criteria alone exclude that vast majority of tech jobs.
Most software products suck, both on the technical front, and the user experience front.
> It can't be a matter of technical challenge; there are plenty of hard jobs out there.
Right, but they are challenging because you have to work with terrible tech. This is not an interesting kind of challenge. It's the annoying kind of challenge.
Think of it this way: building a website using only Notepad (the default text editor in Windows XP) is probably challenging, but is it interesting? No.
> And if you mean it in terms of social good, maybe if you have very unusual values?
"Social Good". I don't like terms like this. In the west this term is often conflated with leftist values. I'm mostly concerned with technical excellence and making products that provide some value to end users.
These two criteria alone exclude that vast majority of tech jobs.
Most software products suck, both on the technical front, and the user experience front.
> It can't be a matter of technical challenge; there are plenty of hard jobs out there.
Right, but they are challenging because you have to work with terrible tech. This is not an interesting kind of challenge. It's the annoying kind of challenge.
Think of it this way: building a website using only Notepad (the default text editor in Windows XP) is probably challenging, but is it interesting? No.
> Most software products suck, both on the technical front, and the user experience front.
Since you also hate being an employee, this could be your chance to venture on your own and make awesome technical products with great user experience, given that you posit most software suck.
Since you also hate being an employee, this could be your chance to venture on your own and make awesome technical products with great user experience, given that you posit most software suck.
Thanks for your advice
> As if you're affirming an anxious person.
Honestly I'd be willing to bet most (> 50%) readers of HN including myself fit in this description.
Honestly I'd be willing to bet most (> 50%) readers of HN including myself fit in this description.
I'd be really surprised if the majority of HN readers are anxious people with low self image who need external affirmation.
I do think it applies to reddit (probably ~80% of them are like that), but for HN I don't think would apply to more than 10%.
I do think it applies to reddit (probably ~80% of them are like that), but for HN I don't think would apply to more than 10%.
Have you ever considered contracting?
I've only ever seen a few resumes that were exclusively short tenure careers.
The two questions it raises for me:
1. Is this a person who has ever lived with the consequences of their decisions and code? Can they maintain what they write?
2. Is this a person worth investing training, mentorship and coaching into?
I will still interview the person, but I change my questions to find out if they've maintained systems, lived with code they've written.
To the second I ask no questions... It's just a risk. Onboarding takes time from a productive engineer, if I don't believe someone will stick around that time is wasted when paid double (for this person and the person that will replace them within a year).
That's only a few people in hundreds of people interviewed. I hired one, they left after 10 months :shrug
These people are likely not you though. There's a big fear that "I've only had one job and I'm ten months in and it's truly awful, if I quit have I destroyed my career?"... no, you're fine, just quit. Or "I've worked a few jobs for 3+ years and then had a couple less than a year, I'm trying to find the right thing for me and this isn't it, if I quit have I ended my career?"... no, you're fine, just quit.
A resume covering a decade or more of entirely short tenure things is a different beast from whatever your circumstances are likely to be. But if you are one of those people, consider the signal it sends... has this person ever lived with the consequences of their decisions (both technical and interpersonal)? How would you show this? Do you have a long-lived OSS project? A long-lived and maintained side-project. Extracurricular isn't needed to get a job, but if your resume can't communicate something then this is where that stuff helps.
The two questions it raises for me:
1. Is this a person who has ever lived with the consequences of their decisions and code? Can they maintain what they write?
2. Is this a person worth investing training, mentorship and coaching into?
I will still interview the person, but I change my questions to find out if they've maintained systems, lived with code they've written.
To the second I ask no questions... It's just a risk. Onboarding takes time from a productive engineer, if I don't believe someone will stick around that time is wasted when paid double (for this person and the person that will replace them within a year).
That's only a few people in hundreds of people interviewed. I hired one, they left after 10 months :shrug
These people are likely not you though. There's a big fear that "I've only had one job and I'm ten months in and it's truly awful, if I quit have I destroyed my career?"... no, you're fine, just quit. Or "I've worked a few jobs for 3+ years and then had a couple less than a year, I'm trying to find the right thing for me and this isn't it, if I quit have I ended my career?"... no, you're fine, just quit.
A resume covering a decade or more of entirely short tenure things is a different beast from whatever your circumstances are likely to be. But if you are one of those people, consider the signal it sends... has this person ever lived with the consequences of their decisions (both technical and interpersonal)? How would you show this? Do you have a long-lived OSS project? A long-lived and maintained side-project. Extracurricular isn't needed to get a job, but if your resume can't communicate something then this is where that stuff helps.
I have had pretty short tenure for most of my career up to now. The reasons for this are pretty much your questions turned around:
1. Am I allowed to write maintainable code, or just have to push features?
2. Will the organization invest in me, coach me and allow me to grow into roles with more purpose and hopefully financial reward?
If companies treat me like a piece of meat, in stead of a human who's trying to build a career, I get out. And often it takes a while for the truth to appear. I always hope to find a place where I feel good enough to work for 5 or 10 years, but up to now no employer has treated me well enough to stick around that long.
1. Am I allowed to write maintainable code, or just have to push features?
2. Will the organization invest in me, coach me and allow me to grow into roles with more purpose and hopefully financial reward?
If companies treat me like a piece of meat, in stead of a human who's trying to build a career, I get out. And often it takes a while for the truth to appear. I always hope to find a place where I feel good enough to work for 5 or 10 years, but up to now no employer has treated me well enough to stick around that long.
I have a rule of thumb for job hopping - If it’s your Nth job in your career you can job hop after N years at that job.
In your first year you can hop after a year. Then you stay for 2 years at the next , 3 years at the next and so on.
Staying at a shitty job at the beginning of your career is a terrible idea. But only having short stints in the later half of your career is also a bad idea.
In your first year you can hop after a year. Then you stay for 2 years at the next , 3 years at the next and so on.
Staying at a shitty job at the beginning of your career is a terrible idea. But only having short stints in the later half of your career is also a bad idea.
If I ever feel that I need to go by some rule of thumb like that, I'll just go back to working for a government institution. No stress, solid paycheck and impossible to get fired. For now, I'm still trying to enjoy what I'm doing and will switch when I'm not.
I wonder what would be your take on my stints (non-tech Ops guy here, based out of Asia/Europe for reference). I have changed jobs 5 times in 6 years:
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
Sounds like an interesting career with some bad luck and some risks that didn’t pan out. I think your three-year stint shows you’re capable of sticking around when it works and is possible. I can’t imagine anyone who had a conversation with you about your job history holding it against you.
Thanks. That's a helpful point. With startups, you take some risks and they don't pan out. I am still trying to figure out the best way to bring this in my profile/pitch/resume.
I suspect that the Hiring Managers/HR in the US don't seem to be very pedantic about job-hopping in startup world if we're looking at the first 5-6 years. Europe is a lot more old-school in this sense.
I suspect that the Hiring Managers/HR in the US don't seem to be very pedantic about job-hopping in startup world if we're looking at the first 5-6 years. Europe is a lot more old-school in this sense.
As a former hiring manager of software engineers, I can shed some light on when (and why) I don't like to see short tenures.
1) In a large software engineering organization (1000s of employees), knowledge of internal issues becomes a much bigger bar to getting something shipped than simple chops. When you look at big product failures from companies like Microsoft/Google/etc. they're much more due to the company making bad decisions rather than individual engineers not being technically competent enough. Guiding the company to better decisions is something that you can only get really good at with time and repeated interactions with people (although time certainly doesn't mean you'll get good at it!)
2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC.
3) There are some scenarios where I don't need someone to develop knowledge of the internal org, in fact I need to bring in external knowledge. For example, nobody in the company has done anything but React Native and I need someone with React Native experience to help jumpstart something. Here I'd happily hire a job hopper as they will get a working prototype built faster than anyone else, and by the time they're gone the org will likely have made a decision on whether to staff up a full team around it or scrap it.
1) In a large software engineering organization (1000s of employees), knowledge of internal issues becomes a much bigger bar to getting something shipped than simple chops. When you look at big product failures from companies like Microsoft/Google/etc. they're much more due to the company making bad decisions rather than individual engineers not being technically competent enough. Guiding the company to better decisions is something that you can only get really good at with time and repeated interactions with people (although time certainly doesn't mean you'll get good at it!)
2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC.
3) There are some scenarios where I don't need someone to develop knowledge of the internal org, in fact I need to bring in external knowledge. For example, nobody in the company has done anything but React Native and I need someone with React Native experience to help jumpstart something. Here I'd happily hire a job hopper as they will get a working prototype built faster than anyone else, and by the time they're gone the org will likely have made a decision on whether to staff up a full team around it or scrap it.
> In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC
Strong disagree with this sentiment. I think you (or your company) are alone in the expectation or hope that an IC candidate would have even the remotest chance of rising to director or above.
Every engineering manager I've ever known, when they hire for an IC role they're looking for an awesome IC and that's it. Their hope is that the IC will have the chops, scope, and leadership to build awesome systems/products and grow up the technical ladder.
Strong disagree with this sentiment. I think you (or your company) are alone in the expectation or hope that an IC candidate would have even the remotest chance of rising to director or above.
Every engineering manager I've ever known, when they hire for an IC role they're looking for an awesome IC and that's it. Their hope is that the IC will have the chops, scope, and leadership to build awesome systems/products and grow up the technical ladder.
At many companies now, the requirement to be promoted from Manager to Senior Manager is having X number of managers under you. This is frequently done by splitting the responsibilities of your current team into multiple teams. A great way to accelerate that is to have one of your ICs with context and rapport transition into managing one of the sub teams.
This is what ends up killing companies. Too many levels of management which causes massive inefficiency.
Yep.
There's also the slightly more twisted version of this, where companies have special 'leadership' training programs and the employees on teams get 'hand picked' by their managers or the org. It tends to lead to lead to knock-on effects like managers selecting for sycophants in hiring, the program being used as an additional carrot/stick (I saw one abusive manager threaten to get someone 'knocked out' of the program I'm thinking of,) as well as generally causing a level of artificial false seniority.
There's also the slightly more twisted version of this, where companies have special 'leadership' training programs and the employees on teams get 'hand picked' by their managers or the org. It tends to lead to lead to knock-on effects like managers selecting for sycophants in hiring, the program being used as an additional carrot/stick (I saw one abusive manager threaten to get someone 'knocked out' of the program I'm thinking of,) as well as generally causing a level of artificial false seniority.
I would say that yes, my job isn’t to hire the next CEO of the company, but the organization places constraints on hiring that eventually yield this. For example, the entire in-office culture vs WFH may be a way of identifying “straight shooters with upper management written all over them.” And that hiring ICs who can become managers directly makes me more likely to become a Director.
When a company focuses on the management more than the product, technical expertise, and engineering culture, it’s doomed, with pruning of that management being the only way out. This is a song as old as time, in the tech world.
Agree that companies can disappear up their own asses but the value of great management is very high. Satya Nadella at Microsoft for example has been worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the shareholders. Guys that good do not grow on trees - they had Steve Ballmer who didn't know how to do anything except make money. And if Microsoft hadn't hired him 25 years ago, they would have probably had to put some McMBA in charge, and would have had one more Steve Ballmer era. So the value of that hire, 25 years ago, was extremely high.
I get that, but I imagine changing the hiring process to optimize the statistics of getting a CEO will be somewhat opposed to a hiring process that optimizes the statistics of being able to innovate, and deliver a new product. Innovation comes from the bottom up, since it's nearly always a technical constraint being solved.
But, my perspective is primarily the hardware world. Maybe in-house innovation isn't necessary with something like a pure software OS and business suite.
But, my perspective is primarily the hardware world. Maybe in-house innovation isn't necessary with something like a pure software OS and business suite.
I think all you have to do is hire engineers who seem like they have some people skills. The rest can be the law of large numbers
Job hoppers tend to climb the ladder faster than people who don't job hop. Also, they often end up doing several stints at the same company over their careers. The job hopper is probably more likely to be CEO than a lifer.
I don't agree with this actually.
Conventional wisdom is that job hopping is a great way to progress but the reality is: Job hopping forces an evaluation of your skills and values on the market.
The problem with the second statement is that it only works for positions that are hiring, and that means there is an invisible ceiling when certain roles are internal promotions only.
The last 5 people to become my manager did so by being hired internally. The only time I've seen an external director hire in any of my companies was when the company was small or that person had been a director level employee at a rival company.
Conventional wisdom is that job hopping is a great way to progress but the reality is: Job hopping forces an evaluation of your skills and values on the market.
The problem with the second statement is that it only works for positions that are hiring, and that means there is an invisible ceiling when certain roles are internal promotions only.
The last 5 people to become my manager did so by being hired internally. The only time I've seen an external director hire in any of my companies was when the company was small or that person had been a director level employee at a rival company.
I’ve been thinking for a couple minutes and don’t know of a well-known CEO who fits your claim. For it to be true, more than 50% would have to be. Or do you mean CEO of lots of little companies, therefore more likely?
Either way, those CEO’s deserve to try run their businesses when filled with job hoppers. It better be a simple company that doesn’t benefit from any organisational memory. Do VC’s invest in job hoppers or do you think they might be aware of any…warning signs?
Either way, those CEO’s deserve to try run their businesses when filled with job hoppers. It better be a simple company that doesn’t benefit from any organisational memory. Do VC’s invest in job hoppers or do you think they might be aware of any…warning signs?
The well-known CEOs are often not the norm, and if you look at the staff underneath them, you will see a lot of mercenaries who job-hopped. The CEOs of smaller companies are often professional CEOs.
Research studies also suggest that job hopping is the way to raise your salary and job level faster than being loyal, although I think the optimal tenure is 2-3 years (which is longer than a lot of modern job hoppers).
Research studies also suggest that job hopping is the way to raise your salary and job level faster than being loyal, although I think the optimal tenure is 2-3 years (which is longer than a lot of modern job hoppers).
I think you’re right.
Maybe at some companies that I don't know. At the larger places that I've worked, the CEOs have had 1-5 jobs over ~20-30 years before becoming CEO.
For every 1 in 10 engineers that you promote to being a manager, less than 1 in 10 of them will be any good at it because the skills needed to be good at the former are different from the ones needed for the latter. This is a mistake that I see being made time and time again. Ironically, this also contributes to job hopping and turnover among engineers who are subjected to these bad managers.
This sounds like you've been at minority-shareholder-operated companies (as opposed to owner or majority-shareholder operated). They are managerialized and the reason job-hoppers are negative is that it is a bureaucratic organization with multiple competing power centers. Things get done based on favors and insider relationships, as opposed to a clear authority. Since it takes a while to build up a "balance" of favors to call upon, it takes a long time to be productive.
That's the real reason. #1 is a direct consequence of this structure, #2 is a side consequence. There's no good reason you couldn't hire senior people from outside - the only reason to favor promoting from within so heavily is that they have decrypted the power factions while they were "cheaper" junior employees. #3 just sounds like an exception situation - if you were actually tasked to "staff up a full team" - you would no longer consider job-hoppers, for all the previous reasons.
That's the real reason. #1 is a direct consequence of this structure, #2 is a side consequence. There's no good reason you couldn't hire senior people from outside - the only reason to favor promoting from within so heavily is that they have decrypted the power factions while they were "cheaper" junior employees. #3 just sounds like an exception situation - if you were actually tasked to "staff up a full team" - you would no longer consider job-hoppers, for all the previous reasons.
Yes, I am talking about very large (Fortune 500) companies
I wonder if you ever entertained the thought of short tenures being driven by the company environments (hard to find a good fit, a place where you want to stay more than a couple of years) and by some characteristics of the industry as a whole (job hopping=more money). And I'm saying this as someone that has never worked less than 5 years in the same place.
> A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC.
Why do you think so? Is it because you project job hopping in the past into the future history of working in your company, and so IC won't have time to become CEO? Or because of something else?
Why do you think so? Is it because you project job hopping in the past into the future history of working in your company, and so IC won't have time to become CEO? Or because of something else?
Literally none of the managers and higher levels that I've ever worked for have been job hoppers. They haven't all been lifers, but like a new job every ~5 years kind of thing, which in this industry is not a "job hopper."
Why there is such imbalance? Why, for example, people aren't progressing that fast in their career, if they job hop? Or actually do they?
Depends what you want. If you want to make maximum comp as an IC, job hop early on and then settle in and collect cash. If you want to be in senior management the tactics are much different.
> 2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC.
I'm sorry but this is simply a laughable idea. I encourage you to check in your company how many directors+ were hired externally VS were promoted internally. I guarantee you 80% will come from outside.
I'm sorry but this is simply a laughable idea. I encourage you to check in your company how many directors+ were hired externally VS were promoted internally. I guarantee you 80% will come from outside.
Without actively researching the question, I'd say where I am it's closer to the flip of that. Almost certainly the majority are internal promotions.
Interestingly you don't see lots of article on the converse, but I'm getting thrown off by long tenures as well.
I've seen a lot of issues with people staying 10-15y in the same job People get set in their ways, lack the diversity of experience that helps be creative in finding solutions, considering certain issues as insurmountable and a fact of life. In my current job I work with a few people who have been around forever pretty clearly because they are bad and failed to find something else. It might be generalizing a bit and certainly staying 15y in a job doesn't mean the person is bad, but it certainly brings some questions as well.
We don't talk a lot about that, but I see long tenures as an anti pattern.
I've seen a lot of issues with people staying 10-15y in the same job People get set in their ways, lack the diversity of experience that helps be creative in finding solutions, considering certain issues as insurmountable and a fact of life. In my current job I work with a few people who have been around forever pretty clearly because they are bad and failed to find something else. It might be generalizing a bit and certainly staying 15y in a job doesn't mean the person is bad, but it certainly brings some questions as well.
We don't talk a lot about that, but I see long tenures as an anti pattern.
I'm 37 years in the industry. Four jobs. 1 year (starter marriage at a big company in a big city), 10 years (great startup with a great leader where the culture was destroyed after he sold the company), 17 (the best technical challenge for me, but small company bought by big company which outsourced slowly but relentlessly. I would have left five years earlier but in 2008 I was just happy to still have job. I did my best work there), 9 years (still there, now principal SE). I'm a serial monogamist. I think staying, being invested and caring is in my best interest and the company's best interest. The down side is knowing when it's time to go.
Similar to what OP said about short tenures, you need to find out why people stayed so long. Agreed it can lead to parochial thinking. I've also known long tenure seniors that are at best no better than juniors only a couple years out of school.
I hate interviewing candidates, but my former manager told me it was the most important thing I do. Choose my future teammates. An hour is precious little time to suss out competence and character.
Similar to what OP said about short tenures, you need to find out why people stayed so long. Agreed it can lead to parochial thinking. I've also known long tenure seniors that are at best no better than juniors only a couple years out of school.
I hate interviewing candidates, but my former manager told me it was the most important thing I do. Choose my future teammates. An hour is precious little time to suss out competence and character.
On the other hand, I’ve seen very strong candidates who nominally worked the same job for 10-15 years, but when I probe I discover they have explored every nook and cranny of that job, developing expertise in the entire possible scope. That’s a positive look IMO.
I think it depends a bit on the job trajectory as well. Getting promoted several times in 10 years at a company that grows and successfully vs. a flat career trajectory at a company with flat growth tells a pretty different story.
As someone who's been in the industry since the late 80s, that's certainly a perception that some people hold and certainly a factor in why I left my last position after 11 years at the same company (well, several acquisitions along the way.) At some point folks consider a long tenure a negative when you look for your next position and you're best off leaving before that happens.
This article hits on some very good points.
I'd like to add another from the perspective of the hiring manager, now that I've had a few years experience in that role.
It's been my experience that people generally produce their best work after the first year. It takes a while to get to know any business: what its strengths and weaknesses are, and it's only with that understanding that someone can identify areas to make meaningful contributions.
If someone's tenure is consistently around their one year mark, it's unlikely that they've really ever expressed their full potential in a professional setting. They leave before things get really good.
Hiring is an investment - less what the candidate can do today, but what they can contribute over a more substantial period, given the right encouragement.
I'd like to add another from the perspective of the hiring manager, now that I've had a few years experience in that role.
It's been my experience that people generally produce their best work after the first year. It takes a while to get to know any business: what its strengths and weaknesses are, and it's only with that understanding that someone can identify areas to make meaningful contributions.
If someone's tenure is consistently around their one year mark, it's unlikely that they've really ever expressed their full potential in a professional setting. They leave before things get really good.
Hiring is an investment - less what the candidate can do today, but what they can contribute over a more substantial period, given the right encouragement.
> Hiring is an investment
I think this is why many employees are frustrated when they find out that new hires get paid substantially more than them. Which encourages jumping ship, to get a similar wage bump. I've said this before, I don't understand why wage renormalization isn't a standard practice and why it is considered controversial. When investing you don't just buy investments and then when they are working out and have good future potential buy new riskier investments for higher premiums. You should generally continue to add to what has been working. You should have a balanced profile too. You do need some risk (new hires) but you shouldn't spend all your money on new risky things when what's been working continues too. And just like you want to rebalance your profile frequently, to ensure you're not too leveraged, you too need to renormalize wages. People are frustrated because management is not in fact treating hiring like an investment.
I think this is why many employees are frustrated when they find out that new hires get paid substantially more than them. Which encourages jumping ship, to get a similar wage bump. I've said this before, I don't understand why wage renormalization isn't a standard practice and why it is considered controversial. When investing you don't just buy investments and then when they are working out and have good future potential buy new riskier investments for higher premiums. You should generally continue to add to what has been working. You should have a balanced profile too. You do need some risk (new hires) but you shouldn't spend all your money on new risky things when what's been working continues too. And just like you want to rebalance your profile frequently, to ensure you're not too leveraged, you too need to renormalize wages. People are frustrated because management is not in fact treating hiring like an investment.
Where I work we would generally pay the new hire and the existing employee about the same. I.e. there's no such thing as a new hire gets paid more than the existing employee of a similar "level". It's more likely to be the opposite. That said you usually aren't going to be able to hire someone away from their current job by offering them less.
The person jumping ship every year to get small raise is eventually going to run into the problem of not having accomplished anything worthwhile in their career. It's arguably better early on in your career to work for less but do things that are more interesting and have better learning opportunities. One might argue it's always a better choice.
As a manager I would like people to stay, and they mostly do, and I am going to try my darnedest to make sure they are compensated well for their contribution (including the fact that they are more effective by knowing the code base and the product). It is pretty tricky though with the competition constantly trying to recruit way from you and their deep pockets, ensuring people don't burn out or get bored etc. Lots of factors I can't control.
The person jumping ship every year to get small raise is eventually going to run into the problem of not having accomplished anything worthwhile in their career. It's arguably better early on in your career to work for less but do things that are more interesting and have better learning opportunities. One might argue it's always a better choice.
As a manager I would like people to stay, and they mostly do, and I am going to try my darnedest to make sure they are compensated well for their contribution (including the fact that they are more effective by knowing the code base and the product). It is pretty tricky though with the competition constantly trying to recruit way from you and their deep pockets, ensuring people don't burn out or get bored etc. Lots of factors I can't control.
I definitely agree and can sympathize with this sentiment. But to the last part, there are market forces involved. Obviously the value of an employee isn't infinite, but if demand is high, then the wage should reflect that. It is becoming more costly to do computer science. But we're paying for brain power, not machines (something that other engineering jobs have to account for and can too be quite costly. Similarly, having out of date machinery is often a cause for low progress as well as employees jumping ship).
But I do want to know, as a manger do you consider things like yearly wage audits and renormalization. To me this is an important aspect that resolves issues like pay discrepancies, wage bias, etc. I think it also builds high trust with employees because it is a clear signal that you understand that things fall through the gaps but that you are attempting to resolve them.
But I do want to know, as a manger do you consider things like yearly wage audits and renormalization. To me this is an important aspect that resolves issues like pay discrepancies, wage bias, etc. I think it also builds high trust with employees because it is a clear signal that you understand that things fall through the gaps but that you are attempting to resolve them.
I don't have to worry [too much] about this as a manager since it's part of our company culture. We pay everyone (in the same geography) the same for the same level. The level is primarily determined by a peer review process. I just have to make sure the process is actually working and deal with some weird situations that it doesn't account for properly. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it mostly works.
What’s to not understand? It’s cheaper. At least on a short term basis. Most people just take the lower pay and maybe complain a bit. A few leave for a pay bump. Still cheaper than giving everyone that pay bump.
> It's been my experience that people generally produce their best work after the first year. It takes a while to get to know any business: what its strengths and weaknesses are, and it's only with that understanding that someone can identify areas to make meaningful contributions.
My experience matches this, but I would add that the company shares some of the blame. It often takes a full year for the rest of the team, department, or company to fully integrate the new person and tailor their assigned tasks to their individual strengths and weaknesses.
I remember struggling to contribute at a company for several months for no reason other than the people I was supposed to be working with would forget to invite me to key meetings. Teams can get very comfortable working with each other and are naturally resistant to bringing in new people. It takes time to break down those barriers.
My experience matches this, but I would add that the company shares some of the blame. It often takes a full year for the rest of the team, department, or company to fully integrate the new person and tailor their assigned tasks to their individual strengths and weaknesses.
I remember struggling to contribute at a company for several months for no reason other than the people I was supposed to be working with would forget to invite me to key meetings. Teams can get very comfortable working with each other and are naturally resistant to bringing in new people. It takes time to break down those barriers.
I worked somewhere for 3 months and did pretty much nothing for all of it. Then I quit because I hated feeling useless – most stressful job I've ever had. I don't think I'm well-suited for $BigCorp jobs.
In most of my other roles, I think I've often become a valuable contributor being able to "pull their own weight" within 1 to 3 months. On a number of occasions I think joining with a "fresh mind" who will say "you guys are doing what?! lol that's crazy, $this is so much better!" has been a real advantage, sometimes even in the first week. I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of rock-star developer or anything, but in small teams people can get kind of stuck in a sort of an acceptance of the suckage they have, even when it's not needed. One example of this is adding a real database migration instead copying SQL queries from the company chat. Simple stuff really, but does make a meaningful difference.
I do think longer tenures are an advantage because people will have to live with their choices. I have a former co-worker who brags about what he did when he worked for us as being brilliant to this day, but we literally threw it all away because none of it actually worked well; it was complete garbage. But he never stayed long enough to have to deal with any of that.
In most of my other roles, I think I've often become a valuable contributor being able to "pull their own weight" within 1 to 3 months. On a number of occasions I think joining with a "fresh mind" who will say "you guys are doing what?! lol that's crazy, $this is so much better!" has been a real advantage, sometimes even in the first week. I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of rock-star developer or anything, but in small teams people can get kind of stuck in a sort of an acceptance of the suckage they have, even when it's not needed. One example of this is adding a real database migration instead copying SQL queries from the company chat. Simple stuff really, but does make a meaningful difference.
I do think longer tenures are an advantage because people will have to live with their choices. I have a former co-worker who brags about what he did when he worked for us as being brilliant to this day, but we literally threw it all away because none of it actually worked well; it was complete garbage. But he never stayed long enough to have to deal with any of that.
>> One example of this is adding a real database migration instead copying SQL queries from the company chat. Simple stuff really, but does make a meaningful difference
bytebase.com could be what you are looking for.
Disclaimer: I am one of the authors.
bytebase.com could be what you are looking for.
Disclaimer: I am one of the authors.
This was like 8 years ago and I no longer work there; all that was really needed was a "versions" table and a "for file := os.ReadDir("migrations")". Even that basic version was already a huge improvement.
When I joined we didn't even have a CI, and everyone was committing to master, usually with undescriptive expletive-laden commit messages.
When I joined we didn't even have a CI, and everyone was committing to master, usually with undescriptive expletive-laden commit messages.
> It's been my experience that people generally produce their best work after the first year.
This is a strange sentiment based on my experience.
I leave most jobs after a year because they get boring. I've never not shipped a fairly important project in the first 6 months of employment. After a year nearly every place I've been at has been struggling to find that next thing for me to do since I've finished all the projects they had in the backlog when hiring.
My experience is that at most orgs the one year mark is when coasting begins and I personally find coasting incredibly boring.
This is a strange sentiment based on my experience.
I leave most jobs after a year because they get boring. I've never not shipped a fairly important project in the first 6 months of employment. After a year nearly every place I've been at has been struggling to find that next thing for me to do since I've finished all the projects they had in the backlog when hiring.
My experience is that at most orgs the one year mark is when coasting begins and I personally find coasting incredibly boring.
You wrote it now you have to support the decisions you made and if you know you are going to have to deal with something in the future you will take the time to account for it but if you never see past a year you will never learn what really worked
Shipping is important, but what’s just as important is learning the impact of what exactly you shipped and how you shipped it. In software this is often done by operating and modifying the system in a series of experiments over time, including observing the relationship between the product and the organization that produces and maintains it, gaining insight into the delivery of software at scale.
For many of us, what we learn in meaningful stretches at companies, is a kind of capital that we leverage to gain access to opportunities that take our career in the direction we want to go.
If I may speculate, perhaps you are overqualified for the jobs you describe. Or, perhaps you love creating new things but not maintaining and augmenting existing things (which is fine, but just like short stints, is a quality that many hiring managers, especially at established companies, view as a negative. You could be an amazing serial startup 0 to 1 person though).
For many of us, what we learn in meaningful stretches at companies, is a kind of capital that we leverage to gain access to opportunities that take our career in the direction we want to go.
If I may speculate, perhaps you are overqualified for the jobs you describe. Or, perhaps you love creating new things but not maintaining and augmenting existing things (which is fine, but just like short stints, is a quality that many hiring managers, especially at established companies, view as a negative. You could be an amazing serial startup 0 to 1 person though).
Of course it's easy. Creating features is the easy part of SWE. Supporting your features over years of changing requirements and refactorings is the hard part.
I wonder what would be your take on my stints (non-tech Ops guy here, based out of Asia/Europe for reference). I have changed jobs 5 times in 6 years:
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
Most companies do not invest in their employees and are more than happy to fire them at will. It's a two way street and employees have just responded in kind to how most companies treat employees. Obviously there are exceptions to that rule and that is usually where you see people staying longer.
"first year" it definitely varies by company, projects and experience level.
Am I the only one that feels like jobs that are good enough to warrant a 2-3 year tenure are actually rare?
I'd say tenures in the 1-2 year range should be considered normal. However, I agree that less than a year feels short. But honestly, that sort of implies that the average job is worth sticking around for a year or longer. Putting it that way, even that claim seems a bit shaky.
In reality, I think good leaders and teams are pretty unusual. Most people are just good at dealing with bad ones or living in denial of them.
I'd say tenures in the 1-2 year range should be considered normal. However, I agree that less than a year feels short. But honestly, that sort of implies that the average job is worth sticking around for a year or longer. Putting it that way, even that claim seems a bit shaky.
In reality, I think good leaders and teams are pretty unusual. Most people are just good at dealing with bad ones or living in denial of them.
I’m on year 15 with most colleagues in the 5-15 range, some approaching 20. I wouldn’t say someone can’t contribute at all initially, but I’d say the first year I expect any new hire to be almost net negative (in the sense that while their output is good, it’s often with a lot of support that takes time from more senior colleagues).
If I was suspecting someone wouldn’t stay say 3 years, I’d definitely not hire them at all.
If I was suspecting someone wouldn’t stay say 3 years, I’d definitely not hire them at all.
> I’m on year 15 with most colleagues in the 5-15 range, some approaching 20.
That doesn't counter their theory though, since people (presumably) won't tend to stay at jobs that aren't worth staying at. Sooner or later everyone finds their way to a job worth staying at and becomes another example of survivorship bias.
The biggest factor is presumably the company itself, some are much more successful and generous as a result while others struggle more and share the pain. But also within a company, there can be a counter-effect where making some jobs better causes more crappy jobs, for example if you're constantly pushing the less fun and career-dead-ending stuff onto the new guy while the senior people with all the political sway take the fun, cutting-edge, etc new tasks.
That doesn't counter their theory though, since people (presumably) won't tend to stay at jobs that aren't worth staying at. Sooner or later everyone finds their way to a job worth staying at and becomes another example of survivorship bias.
The biggest factor is presumably the company itself, some are much more successful and generous as a result while others struggle more and share the pain. But also within a company, there can be a counter-effect where making some jobs better causes more crappy jobs, for example if you're constantly pushing the less fun and career-dead-ending stuff onto the new guy while the senior people with all the political sway take the fun, cutting-edge, etc new tasks.
the last two roles ive been in honestly expect real contributions beginning about the 6th week, and tbh I thought that was late. where are you finding places where you can be net negative for an entire year?
A year sounds extreme for being net negative, but I have a somewhat similar experience in a mixed hardware/software company. There's so much domain-specific knowledge that takes most people a long time to ramp up in. You haven't truly arrived unless you've ramped up and seen a full product cycle. That takes years, because hardware is slow to iterate.
anything infrastructure
I don’t get it. What makes it worth staying 1-2 years, but not 2-3 years? What happens at 2 years that makes you want to do the job before and not want to do it after?
If you never like your job I don’t think switching every 2 years helps. And if you are in it for the paycheck, 4 is usually optimal.
Personally, I found whether I’m having a good time depends on the team and the project. And usually one or the other changes periodically.
If you never like your job I don’t think switching every 2 years helps. And if you are in it for the paycheck, 4 is usually optimal.
Personally, I found whether I’m having a good time depends on the team and the project. And usually one or the other changes periodically.
> What makes it worth staying 1-2 years, but not 2-3 years?
A 4% raise.
Management are idiots and will only give out small single digit percentage point raises while jumping companies will result in 20+% raises. The longer you stay with a company the further your salary falls behind.
This financial dictate means that your max tenure at a company should be 5 years--and definitely not even that long without a REALLY good reason.
A 4% raise.
Management are idiots and will only give out small single digit percentage point raises while jumping companies will result in 20+% raises. The longer you stay with a company the further your salary falls behind.
This financial dictate means that your max tenure at a company should be 5 years--and definitely not even that long without a REALLY good reason.
It's also pretty frequent at larger companies that new hires (even those at a level lower) will get higher comp than tenured employees.
Many of these same companies also have very difficult promo processes, requiring you to effectively "got to trial" and defend why you should be promoted.
This exact scenario has occurred with multiple co-workers of mine (most have now left, the rest are actively interviewing:
If, after the months of preparation for promo you "got to trial" and do so successfully, you may find a newly hired, less experienced, lower leveled co-worker with no experience with any of the internal processes or tooling makes 25% more than you.
When companies behave this way, what's the incentive to stick around?
Many of these same companies also have very difficult promo processes, requiring you to effectively "got to trial" and defend why you should be promoted.
This exact scenario has occurred with multiple co-workers of mine (most have now left, the rest are actively interviewing:
If, after the months of preparation for promo you "got to trial" and do so successfully, you may find a newly hired, less experienced, lower leveled co-worker with no experience with any of the internal processes or tooling makes 25% more than you.
When companies behave this way, what's the incentive to stick around?
Yeah. If companies want people to stay, they should just pay for it. Pay more, give better and frequent raises, offer more benefits, more everything. Then people won't want to leave for the other companies offering better compensation. It's very simple.
Any "red flag" talk is just companies trying to disincentivize employees from effectively negotiating better compensation for themselves. They're trying to eliminate employee BATNAs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
Any "red flag" talk is just companies trying to disincentivize employees from effectively negotiating better compensation for themselves. They're trying to eliminate employee BATNAs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
Lots of tech companies give a stock grant that vests over 4 years. Then each year an additional “refresher” grant that also vests over 4 years. So your comp increases each year because of the stacking grants (a lot better than 4%) then drops a lot after year 4 when the initial grant expires.
Obviously many circumstances can change the equation.
Obviously many circumstances can change the equation.
Idk, I got a ~400% raise over 3 years as I showed I was more valuable than my comp and got the right ears to listen to that, with help of a V-level who recognized it. I’m not saying that will be everyone’s experience, but its odds become much more favorable for people hopping startups with smaller overall org charts
Is it possible that, given the information your employer has, they can determine you are worth no more than a 4% raise? While, on the other hand, the prospective new employer does not have the same information (the experience of actually being your employer) and risks a 20% premium? In the end, maybe the market is actually operating efficiently?
In a typical company, raises are budgeted based on a company-wide assessment of how much people "should" get. So even if your manager is sure you're worth 20% more, you simply can't get a 20% raise without some exceptional justification.
How exactly are you measuring impact such that you think you have it characterized with 4% error bars?
For me, it's the fact that roughly 1 year seems to be the average cutoff point for how long I can tolerate doing something that feels meaningless to me and otherwise doesn't bring me any financial advantage that would allow me to duck out of the game altogether.
Have you considered the possibility that with a 1-2 year time horizon, you're more or less setting yourself up for exactly the series of meaningless jobs with limited financial upside that you're seeing as the reason for your time horizon?
No one leaves a job that’s interesting & lucrative. How many companies make it a priority to make jobs interesting & lucrative? Very few.
But you expect the next job to be just as meaningless.
So changing does nothing to address your stated problem.
So changing does nothing to address your stated problem.
Variety is good regardless. It's refreshing.
Variety also tends to bring financial advantage, increased skills and exposure to new knowledge, a larger personal network in the same time, and if most (but not all) jobs are unsatisfying, variety gives you more chances to eventually find one that's the exception worth staying with.
Variety also tends to bring financial advantage, increased skills and exposure to new knowledge, a larger personal network in the same time, and if most (but not all) jobs are unsatisfying, variety gives you more chances to eventually find one that's the exception worth staying with.
Perhaps you're choosing the wrong jobs, as suggested by the article?
> I don’t get it. What makes it worth staying 1-2 years, but not 2-3 years?
Frequently, a vesting cliff.
Frequently, a vesting cliff.
May I ask: Why do you think 4y is optimal for pay increase?
For me, I would swap anyway after 2y for the below reasons but I've found that optimal for income...
Year 1:
* You're learning a lot
* You're on significantly more money and better benefits than before
* You can plausibly believe that all the cultural/structural issues you have will be solved in the next 12m
Year 3:
* None of the above. You're learning very little, you've gotten cost of living raises or a little above but not the 20% + a job change should bring, you realise now the business has no intention of dealing with it's issues. You will just have to live with them...
For me, I would swap anyway after 2y for the below reasons but I've found that optimal for income...
Year 1:
* You're learning a lot
* You're on significantly more money and better benefits than before
* You can plausibly believe that all the cultural/structural issues you have will be solved in the next 12m
Year 3:
* None of the above. You're learning very little, you've gotten cost of living raises or a little above but not the 20% + a job change should bring, you realise now the business has no intention of dealing with it's issues. You will just have to live with them...
1-2 years can happen due to changes like your manager changes, large number of your team mates leave, company gets acquired. Such circumstances can bring about major changes to culture/environment/scope.
I was at my last job for 6 years and I've been at my current job for 4 years with no plans on leaving anytime soon. It's a little insane to me that anyone would consider leaving their job after 1-2 years without something being horribly wrong about the work environment. It takes a year for me to even feel moderately productive in a new environment. Job hopping ever year or two seems like doing the worst part of employment over and over again. It makes no sense to me.
I will agree that a lot will depend heavily on individual circumstances. I remember joining a group that seemed like a match, but rather quickly turned out not to be. It was only due to the economy at the time that I could not get out faster. In my case, my mental health was worth more than worrying over anomaly in my resume.
They do it because employers are too averse to increase salaries, and job hopping is sometimes the only way to get raises.
It is a game of perverse incentives.
It is a game of perverse incentives.
You’re looking at this backwards. Understandably so, but still backwards.
There’s no platonic “considered normal” there’s employee and employer incentives and how they play out in combination.
If there’s a high probability that you are going to think my team is bad and not worth sticking around for, why would I want to hire you?
There’s no platonic “considered normal” there’s employee and employer incentives and how they play out in combination.
If there’s a high probability that you are going to think my team is bad and not worth sticking around for, why would I want to hire you?
I kept people for decades, and they didn't actually make that much, compared to others in similar positions.
When they finally wound up our department, the person with the least tenure had over ten years.
Good managers are worth their weight in gold.
When they finally wound up our department, the person with the least tenure had over ten years.
Good managers are worth their weight in gold.
I’ve stayed at every previous professional job I’ve had for 3+ years. One was ~6, but probably should have been 4. One was ~3 and ran out of funding, otherwise I probably would have stayed much longer. One was ~5 and definitely should have been 4. My current job is approaching 2 years, and I can’t foresee ever wanting to leave it.
I think jobs that are good are pretty rare (my current one really stands out here). But among “good enough”, I think staying longer can be valuable depending on what you value, what you’re looking to get out of a longer tenure (and how motivated/positioned/stubborn you are about getting that), and just plain how “good enough” it is.
The 6 year job should have been 4 because my potential and existing skillsets were outgrowing the scope of the job, with no business reason for room to advance. The 3 year job I would have stayed at longer fostered tremendous professional growth for me, and erased significant comp disadvantages I’d accrued before it. The 5 year job which should have been 4 didn’t produce such tremendous growth, but did produce several surprising opportunities to grow in areas I’d never anticipated, and it further erased some comp disadvantages; it should have been a year shorter due to burnout and various incompatibilities that grew over time.
My current job is wonderfully meaningful to me and has almost all of the right balances (for me) of potential and real impact on a global scale, responsibility and agency, life balance. In short it’s the closest thing I could describe as a dream job. This I agree is rare, and I think the set of things which could make a given job fit that kind of role in someone’s life will vary wildly person to person.
But for “good enough”, the prior jobs I’ve had largely lasted as long as they did because I focused (albeit imperfectly) on only having jobs that are high on the “good enough” scale, to the extent I have that option. I optimized for wanting to stay long term, even before I realized that’s what I was doing.
I’m certainly leaving figurative money on the figurative table, and probably many other nice things I haven’t considered important. But I don’t want to work anywhere I won’t want to work when some arbitrary timer reaches zero.
I think jobs that are good are pretty rare (my current one really stands out here). But among “good enough”, I think staying longer can be valuable depending on what you value, what you’re looking to get out of a longer tenure (and how motivated/positioned/stubborn you are about getting that), and just plain how “good enough” it is.
The 6 year job should have been 4 because my potential and existing skillsets were outgrowing the scope of the job, with no business reason for room to advance. The 3 year job I would have stayed at longer fostered tremendous professional growth for me, and erased significant comp disadvantages I’d accrued before it. The 5 year job which should have been 4 didn’t produce such tremendous growth, but did produce several surprising opportunities to grow in areas I’d never anticipated, and it further erased some comp disadvantages; it should have been a year shorter due to burnout and various incompatibilities that grew over time.
My current job is wonderfully meaningful to me and has almost all of the right balances (for me) of potential and real impact on a global scale, responsibility and agency, life balance. In short it’s the closest thing I could describe as a dream job. This I agree is rare, and I think the set of things which could make a given job fit that kind of role in someone’s life will vary wildly person to person.
But for “good enough”, the prior jobs I’ve had largely lasted as long as they did because I focused (albeit imperfectly) on only having jobs that are high on the “good enough” scale, to the extent I have that option. I optimized for wanting to stay long term, even before I realized that’s what I was doing.
I’m certainly leaving figurative money on the figurative table, and probably many other nice things I haven’t considered important. But I don’t want to work anywhere I won’t want to work when some arbitrary timer reaches zero.
It depends what your goal is - there are some contributions you can make at an employer on day 1. There are other contributions that demand deeper understanding of more things.
If you're joining the best self-driving-car company because you want to see self-driving cars halve road deaths in the United States - you're not going to achieve that in 1-2 years :)
If you're joining the best self-driving-car company because you want to see self-driving cars halve road deaths in the United States - you're not going to achieve that in 1-2 years :)
> Am I the only one that feels like jobs that are good enough to warrant a 2-3 year tenure are actually rare?
If good teams and good leaders are rare, you might want to re-examine your company selection process.
In my experience, it's easy to find bad jobs if you just let the winds of the industry carry you around from job to job. Bad companies always have high turnover, which means they're always hiring. They may even pay above market because that's the only way they can continue bringing people in to replace everyone who's leaving.
The good jobs are often more selective about their hiring. Many of them may not even post public listings. Going through a network is much more efficient for selecting into the good companies.
If good teams and good leaders are rare, you might want to re-examine your company selection process.
In my experience, it's easy to find bad jobs if you just let the winds of the industry carry you around from job to job. Bad companies always have high turnover, which means they're always hiring. They may even pay above market because that's the only way they can continue bringing people in to replace everyone who's leaving.
The good jobs are often more selective about their hiring. Many of them may not even post public listings. Going through a network is much more efficient for selecting into the good companies.
Having worked in SV for a while and talked to many within SV... Good teams and leaders are rare. Most are garbage. Most people are just worked to death and have crazy ambition/work ethic to make stupid shit happen.
There's no good way to find good teams/leadership. Often people just follow the person that has given them the most favor in their career. It doesn't mean that the manager is a good manager or a good leader - it just means that they're going to treat a particular person favorably. This is a very important distinction.
I can count on one hand the amount of good leaders/managers that I've interacted with in SV and I've interacted with hundreds. It is a toxic place.
There's no good way to find good teams/leadership. Often people just follow the person that has given them the most favor in their career. It doesn't mean that the manager is a good manager or a good leader - it just means that they're going to treat a particular person favorably. This is a very important distinction.
I can count on one hand the amount of good leaders/managers that I've interacted with in SV and I've interacted with hundreds. It is a toxic place.
> it's easy to find bad jobs if you just let the winds of the industry carry you around from job to job
Can confirm. If you're young and inexperienced it's easy to fall victim to recruiters who talk a good game. If you're older and can see through these, you can at least make a choice: do I need to take a job quickly for financial or other reasons? If so, you can find a lot of offers, but don't pretend these are going to be jobs you'll love. At the very least, go ahead and ask for the above-market rate. They worst they can do is say they don't have the budget.
Ideally, you'd work a must-take position just long enough to get back on your feet while you hunt for the job you want. It will probably going to leave a short tenure position on your resume if you do that.
Finding a job in this industry has never been especially difficult. Finding a job that you'd be willing to settle into for 3+ years is hard.
Can confirm. If you're young and inexperienced it's easy to fall victim to recruiters who talk a good game. If you're older and can see through these, you can at least make a choice: do I need to take a job quickly for financial or other reasons? If so, you can find a lot of offers, but don't pretend these are going to be jobs you'll love. At the very least, go ahead and ask for the above-market rate. They worst they can do is say they don't have the budget.
Ideally, you'd work a must-take position just long enough to get back on your feet while you hunt for the job you want. It will probably going to leave a short tenure position on your resume if you do that.
Finding a job in this industry has never been especially difficult. Finding a job that you'd be willing to settle into for 3+ years is hard.
This sounds true. Could you point out some features of a hiring process we can look out for for signs of good teams/leaders? Number of interviews, time it takes to complete the process, kind of questions they ask, etc?
I don't understand how many people can have an impact over a 1-2 year period at a company. That's not nearly enough time to build relationships or see the long term results of your work
At the web dev startups I have worked at I was able to hit the ground running (okay, maybe like 2 weeks of training). If you know the UI & server frameworks most companies aren’t doing anything complicated from a business perspective. Half of them are crud with layers
I think this is the key here: anything that’s crud with layers is the same job. Of course you can be productive within a year if what you are doing is literally the same job.
Sadly this is too common. But what about proper changes of job? Going from embedded to game dev to web to HFT to Ai? Do people not do this kind of switch at all when they say “I just work 1-2 year stints”? That sounds like a pretty dreadful career to swap one crud gig for another, never really knowing a domain deeply.
Sadly this is too common. But what about proper changes of job? Going from embedded to game dev to web to HFT to Ai? Do people not do this kind of switch at all when they say “I just work 1-2 year stints”? That sounds like a pretty dreadful career to swap one crud gig for another, never really knowing a domain deeply.
>But what about proper changes of job?
while I did switch like the ones you mentioned
then I don't agree with you calling it "proper"
I'd call it: making yours life harder due to curiosity.
while I did switch like the ones you mentioned
then I don't agree with you calling it "proper"
I'd call it: making yours life harder due to curiosity.
I guess. But on the other hand I guess in the last decade of web dev just trying to stay afloat in the sea (or tire fire, depending on your perspective) of web dev frameworks and tooling is a full time job and career.
To some that’s probably also something that’s intellectually satisfying.
To some that’s probably also something that’s intellectually satisfying.
They all think what they’re doing is magic and impactful but “crud with layers” is IT
I think you're looking at things backwards. The questions you should be asking are how likely is it that any employee who joins a random new company feels as though they can have an impact on that company and how likely is it that they'll be compensated at market rates over a period longer than a year? I'd say the chances are generally pretty low. Therefore, a short tenure should be the average case for a rational employee. Don't kill the collective messenger.
> Therefore, a short tenure should be the average case for a rational employee.
Is rational the same as “maximizing career income”?
I just feel it’s hard to give up domain knowledge in one thing (say insurance or flight scheduling or whatever) that you aggregate, to be a complete rookie in some other business.
Software skills are the easy bit. It’s the domain knowledge that takes time.
Rational employees want to feel good at their job, intellectually challenged, and appreciated for what they do. That involves financial compensation but I think it’s far from the major driver.
Perhaps there are two major categories of devs: those that have broadly applicable skills (say web development) but no really deep domain knowledge or interest. They can write crud for insurance year 1 and crud for food delivery year 2 and continue that way forever while making good salary jumps each year. To those it seems almost like a bad idea to grow too fond of the details of insurance, as it would hinder their careers.
On the other end of the spectrum you have devs that aggregate lots of domain knowledge in some narrower field. They might switch jobs every 10 years but when they do they almost have to go to a competitor in the same industry because otherwise they throw away too much domain knowledge. The only way they can capitalize is by selling that knowledge.
Is rational the same as “maximizing career income”?
I just feel it’s hard to give up domain knowledge in one thing (say insurance or flight scheduling or whatever) that you aggregate, to be a complete rookie in some other business.
Software skills are the easy bit. It’s the domain knowledge that takes time.
Rational employees want to feel good at their job, intellectually challenged, and appreciated for what they do. That involves financial compensation but I think it’s far from the major driver.
Perhaps there are two major categories of devs: those that have broadly applicable skills (say web development) but no really deep domain knowledge or interest. They can write crud for insurance year 1 and crud for food delivery year 2 and continue that way forever while making good salary jumps each year. To those it seems almost like a bad idea to grow too fond of the details of insurance, as it would hinder their careers.
On the other end of the spectrum you have devs that aggregate lots of domain knowledge in some narrower field. They might switch jobs every 10 years but when they do they almost have to go to a competitor in the same industry because otherwise they throw away too much domain knowledge. The only way they can capitalize is by selling that knowledge.
I used to feel similarly. But (most) businesses today can barely see beyond the next quarter. We're always cutting corners, we're always up against insane deadlines that started as estimates, etc.
I'd care a lot more about the long-term effects of the code that I write and the systems that I build if I was given ample opportunity to actually engage with long-term planning. But I'm not, so I care less about what impact I have a year or two from now with each passing day.
I'd care a lot more about the long-term effects of the code that I write and the systems that I build if I was given ample opportunity to actually engage with long-term planning. But I'm not, so I care less about what impact I have a year or two from now with each passing day.
It really depends on how you define impact. After joining my more recent team, I had some manual labor thrown my way. Me being me did what I thought a reasonable person should do in those circumstances: automate what I could. As a result, time spent on manual labor was cut by a ridiculous amount. I almost don't get why no one did it before me..
In my career so far, it is not uncommon to see low hanging fruits like that, but then I mostly worked in banking ( which is its own little world ).
My point is, you can do a lot in 2 years depending on what you are looking for.
In my career so far, it is not uncommon to see low hanging fruits like that, but then I mostly worked in banking ( which is its own little world ).
My point is, you can do a lot in 2 years depending on what you are looking for.
Depends on what your work is. There’s a lot of stuff you can ship on a short timescale with tons of “impact”. You can’t directly see the results of long-term plans, but you can definitely lay the groundwork and watch people execute on it from outside the company.
If you hire a John Carmack or Jeff Dean (or equivalent) and they can't make a difference in your company within 2 years, your culture is broken and needs to be fixed first.
John Carmack founded id Software in 1991 and stayed until 2013. Jeff Dean joined Google in 1999 and is still there. These are not the kind of people we talk about when one asks "Is two year too short to be a tenure?"
If Carmack or Dean were unable to make an impact after 2 years despite their exceptional skillsets, they probably wouldn't have stayed as long. If your culture doesn't let top performers, well, perform, then why would they waste their time in a place where their contributions can't reach a level of impact that can justify paying them what they're worth?
99.9+% of devs don't come close to the skill of those two
Impact? I've had projects get cancelled when I was less than six months in. Often there's no space for impact.
I do Rails/React work and everything is becoming more or less the same thing with the same problems to work on regardless of the job so I'm able to hit the ground running almost immediately.
This almost certainly depends on the size of the company.
Two years is plenty of time to make an impact at a startup.
Two years is plenty of time to make an impact at a startup.
LOL, you probably never heard of Meta or Amazon where not having an impact in the first 6-12 months will get you PIPed...
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You don't build relationships, you solve the problem you were hired to fix.
Companies don't hire employees to be a preschool playpen for adults. They hire them to do work.
Companies don't hire employees to be a preschool playpen for adults. They hire them to do work.
I believe this attitude goes hand-in-hand with the idea of jumping ship every few years. As an employee, your impact only extends as far as the projects handed to you. You offer no growth potential to an employer.
Similarly, management that only looks for this is offering no reward for better, and deserves the attrition they'll see.
There are roles and companies where growth is both valuable and rewarded. I think it has to be an org where the technology is the product, and not a cost center (necessary, but not sufficient). I think you really have to be paying attention to know what type of org you are in. Taking this attitude up-front at any new job, you may not even see the opportunity.
Similarly, management that only looks for this is offering no reward for better, and deserves the attrition they'll see.
There are roles and companies where growth is both valuable and rewarded. I think it has to be an org where the technology is the product, and not a cost center (necessary, but not sufficient). I think you really have to be paying attention to know what type of org you are in. Taking this attitude up-front at any new job, you may not even see the opportunity.
It's the job of management to manage. If your doing their work for them then you're helping the company fail.
Binning everything that I said as "management" is basically demonstrating my point. This attitude is a self-reinforcing pigeonhole.
Very senior/staff/principal developers manage, too. They just don't manage direct reports.
At least at big companies, fixing problems often requires good cross team relationships.
Great, something for management to do.
If you can manage your own relationships then you don’t need nearly as many managers. That’s more money for you!
Sadly how many managers there are seems to have very little connection with how many are needed. If there are a lot of managers with nothing to do, they're not going to just disappear, and sadly the main way they can make themselves look busy is by wasting your time. (And I can't really blame them; I'd do the same in their place).
And yet I'm always paid more than lifers at a company. Funny how that works.
I don't mean friendships, I mean working relationships like "who is a specialist in X", "who knows what work is coming down the pipe", etc.
Or, it's your turn to plug the hole in a dike.
Another aspect is early career moving around a lot gets you exposed to tons different ideas and approaches, which is crazy valuable.
Ultimately you know it’s like both things can be valuable.
A bunch of 1-2 year stints might quickly help you identify the patterns if things they work well generally abd what doesn’t.
Meanwhile a 5+ year stint will give insight into how a company maintains things and adapts and can also teach valuable lessons.
A bunch of 1-2 year stints might quickly help you identify the patterns if things they work well generally abd what doesn’t.
Meanwhile a 5+ year stint will give insight into how a company maintains things and adapts and can also teach valuable lessons.
I’ve averaged about 5 years over three jobs.
My current one was going pretty well for a year, but COVID stuff and life craziness made it less enjoyable for the next year after a re-org.
I waited another year and tried switching teams at the company and while it started rough I feel like I might find a groove that will get me a couple of years.
After that I might go look for something else.
Sometimes there is a good year followed by a bad year followed by three good years. If you leave after that first bad year you might just jump to another good year bad year cycle and in the end have less good years if you just stayed five years at each place.
My current one was going pretty well for a year, but COVID stuff and life craziness made it less enjoyable for the next year after a re-org.
I waited another year and tried switching teams at the company and while it started rough I feel like I might find a groove that will get me a couple of years.
After that I might go look for something else.
Sometimes there is a good year followed by a bad year followed by three good years. If you leave after that first bad year you might just jump to another good year bad year cycle and in the end have less good years if you just stayed five years at each place.
When I stop learning, I leave. I might stick around longer for extra compensation, but there’s not usually an incentive retention. I often don’t want to leave, but I have to keep my skills sharp & I don’t want to slowly become irrelevant because there’s limited opportunity to try new things.
I've always been told that short tenure is "red flag" and I think it's bullshit.
I've accelerated my net worth by a rate of return of 12% compounded over the last 20 years of professional life. My resume has 10 separate entries in it which means I last on average two years.
Why do I expire after two years? Because no one in my industry gets promoted from within. No one in my industry is ever given more than a cost of living wage increase, and certainly not a 12% year over year average increase. It takes two years of watching people get hired over you with no raise to decide that you deserve more money and you go out and find it.
I believe in judging my value in monetary terms and as I increase my experience, knowledge, and value, I expect that amount to increase as well.
I've accelerated my net worth by a rate of return of 12% compounded over the last 20 years of professional life. My resume has 10 separate entries in it which means I last on average two years.
Why do I expire after two years? Because no one in my industry gets promoted from within. No one in my industry is ever given more than a cost of living wage increase, and certainly not a 12% year over year average increase. It takes two years of watching people get hired over you with no raise to decide that you deserve more money and you go out and find it.
I believe in judging my value in monetary terms and as I increase my experience, knowledge, and value, I expect that amount to increase as well.
I've definitely seen and experienced this. Yes I changed jobs three times in the last 7 years but my compensation went up 3x too. It might have done had I stayed in the first job, it might have not. I would certainly have missed out on all the experiences and adventures of the other jobs. Things do stagnate when startups mature.
Now I'm a director of engineering at a massive (not faang) tech company and it feels like a longer tenure would be better - it takes time to sink in, develop connections and get high impact things done at this level. But I'm not sure I would have gotten here without all the variety of experiences that I gained in the last few +-2 year stints.
Now I'm a director of engineering at a massive (not faang) tech company and it feels like a longer tenure would be better - it takes time to sink in, develop connections and get high impact things done at this level. But I'm not sure I would have gotten here without all the variety of experiences that I gained in the last few +-2 year stints.
1.5-2 years is exactly the correct range to aim for to maximise your salary. Short Tenure is usually less than 1.5y, the article has 1y as it's definition (for senior leadership this is not applicable). So I think you and the article agree in that respect at least.
Also, do you mean your net worth or salary? Those are (sadly) very different numbers... :)
Also, do you mean your net worth or salary? Those are (sadly) very different numbers... :)
So that's a red flag that you're likely not to stick around on the same salary and undervalue your work :P
It's a red flag to assume that I'm going to want a raise, regularly? I don't know that it's my undervaluing of the work that's the problem ... I'm fairly certain that the company undervaluing my work is the problem that makes me leave.
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Jacob is smart and has been around the block a couple times, but I find this whole post kind of frustrating. Essentially what he's talking about is reading tea leaves out of peoples' resumes. I think that's a comprehensively flawed way of qualifying candidates.
It's reasonable to be concerned about behavioral patterns in candidates. Some otherwise-qualified people will be behaviorally incompatible with the roles you have. Maybe they're hard to work with, or need too much or too little structure. To the extent you're concerned about stuff like this, you should probably just check references.
Other than that, what are we talking about here? Hiring managers spend too much time looking at resumes already. It's possible to hire without looking at them at all; the last several companies I've worked for have done just that: just ask people to demonstrate that they can do the work the role requires, build a rubric to assess their performance, and hire the people that clear the bar.
It wouldn't even occur to those teams (or my current team, I guess) to look for patterns and indicators like this, because they're just not making any decisions off of resumes to begin with. I've been in this business since 1995, and studiously avoiding resumes since around 2010. I have made more bad hiring decisions by carefully assessing resumes than I ever have by just asking people to demonstrate the work, and then taking the time to build a serious evaluation checklist for the work.
If you're worried that people are habitually bad communicators, are disorganized, can't manage scope and are adrift without structure, can't stop talking and just deliver some practical unit of work, won't ask questions or collaborate: you can assess for all of these things!
If you're worried that people are ladder-climbers, or aren't here to do the work, you can set expectations.
And if you're worried that candidates aren't going to be loyal and are going to jump ship when presented with a funner job with higher comp at a more promising company, well, that's life in the Professional Golfer's Association, I guess.
It's reasonable to be concerned about behavioral patterns in candidates. Some otherwise-qualified people will be behaviorally incompatible with the roles you have. Maybe they're hard to work with, or need too much or too little structure. To the extent you're concerned about stuff like this, you should probably just check references.
Other than that, what are we talking about here? Hiring managers spend too much time looking at resumes already. It's possible to hire without looking at them at all; the last several companies I've worked for have done just that: just ask people to demonstrate that they can do the work the role requires, build a rubric to assess their performance, and hire the people that clear the bar.
It wouldn't even occur to those teams (or my current team, I guess) to look for patterns and indicators like this, because they're just not making any decisions off of resumes to begin with. I've been in this business since 1995, and studiously avoiding resumes since around 2010. I have made more bad hiring decisions by carefully assessing resumes than I ever have by just asking people to demonstrate the work, and then taking the time to build a serious evaluation checklist for the work.
If you're worried that people are habitually bad communicators, are disorganized, can't manage scope and are adrift without structure, can't stop talking and just deliver some practical unit of work, won't ask questions or collaborate: you can assess for all of these things!
If you're worried that people are ladder-climbers, or aren't here to do the work, you can set expectations.
And if you're worried that candidates aren't going to be loyal and are going to jump ship when presented with a funner job with higher comp at a more promising company, well, that's life in the Professional Golfer's Association, I guess.
I’ve recently developed a fairly strong anti-FAANG bias. It would be easy to hide this bias based on their pattern of employment history. Their employment terms make it extremely rational to leave after 4 years, so telling myself a story around that as a hiring criteria (eg “only people uncommitted to an idea leave every 4 years”) would make it easy for me to make my bias into a supposedly rational hiring criteria.
Instead, I just don’t look at resumes. I don’t ask about job history and I don’t bring it up in interviews. Rather, I create a rubric based on something I can judge outside of a resume and stick to that. This is frustrating! I myself have a long resume. I’d like to not have to explain it over and over again and expertise is a thing! But the rubric can account for this without pattern matching against a persons career history, and must or you fall into the bias trap.
Instead, I just don’t look at resumes. I don’t ask about job history and I don’t bring it up in interviews. Rather, I create a rubric based on something I can judge outside of a resume and stick to that. This is frustrating! I myself have a long resume. I’d like to not have to explain it over and over again and expertise is a thing! But the rubric can account for this without pattern matching against a persons career history, and must or you fall into the bias trap.
Staying somewhere too long is just as bad as job hopping. I've also seen a lot of developers who stayed in their job for a long period of time and were not very good at it, while the "job hoppers" were at the top of their game.
One of the biggest challenges is that the interview process does not give an employee or an employer a good signal on if the relationship will be mutually beneficial and a good fit for both people. I've also seen a lot of companies that will present the environment etc. one way during the interview only to find that things are much different once you get into the day to day.
Also, the followup article adds some more nuance to this here. https://jacobian.org/2022/oct/20/tenure-and-seniority/
One of the biggest challenges is that the interview process does not give an employee or an employer a good signal on if the relationship will be mutually beneficial and a good fit for both people. I've also seen a lot of companies that will present the environment etc. one way during the interview only to find that things are much different once you get into the day to day.
Also, the followup article adds some more nuance to this here. https://jacobian.org/2022/oct/20/tenure-and-seniority/
In the ten years that I've been in this industry, my application was rejected on grounds of tenure once - by GitLab.
> If you want the people that you hire to stay, do it by building a great workplace and paying people well – not by finding staff who are too timid to leave bad situations.
This is an important point. I quit one project after eight months and at least two people out of my 11-person team referred to this decision as a "luxury available to those who have savings".
Plenty of people paint themselves into a corner like that.
> If you want the people that you hire to stay, do it by building a great workplace and paying people well – not by finding staff who are too timid to leave bad situations.
This is an important point. I quit one project after eight months and at least two people out of my 11-person team referred to this decision as a "luxury available to those who have savings".
Plenty of people paint themselves into a corner like that.
I was jokingly called a coward when I quit job. Yep, spot on! I don't want to work somewhere where doing a job is heroic. Unless I own that company.
“It’s fine even if it’s fifth or seventh” - this is bad advice (citation: I’m a hiring manager). My sourcer will filter you out even before your resume hits my part of the pipeline, so you can’t depend on me figuring out if you are a good candidate despite your bad tenure.
If someone has a couple bad jobs in a row, it's not a big deal. There are a lot of bad companies out there and it's easy to get lured into a couple of them.
However, if someone shows up and claims to have had five or seven bad jobs in a row, you have to start looking at them as the common denominator. At that point, it's not even about short tenure any more. It's a warning sign that this person hasn't been able to get along with any teams anywhere. Some people just can't get along with anyone in the workplace for very long. If you hire them, it likely won't be long before they think you are their latest "bad job".
> My sourcer will filter you out even before your resume hits my part of the pipeline, so you can’t depend on me figuring out if you are a good candidate despite your bad tenure.
I've found the opposite with some recruiters: They'll have several candidates in their network/portfolio who are always unhappy and therefore always changing jobs. They try to slip them into the hiring pipeline because they know these people are so easy to convince to accept a new job. When the recruiter moves to a new company/firm, they go through the list and put all of their reliable job hoppers back into the queue.
However, if someone shows up and claims to have had five or seven bad jobs in a row, you have to start looking at them as the common denominator. At that point, it's not even about short tenure any more. It's a warning sign that this person hasn't been able to get along with any teams anywhere. Some people just can't get along with anyone in the workplace for very long. If you hire them, it likely won't be long before they think you are their latest "bad job".
> My sourcer will filter you out even before your resume hits my part of the pipeline, so you can’t depend on me figuring out if you are a good candidate despite your bad tenure.
I've found the opposite with some recruiters: They'll have several candidates in their network/portfolio who are always unhappy and therefore always changing jobs. They try to slip them into the hiring pipeline because they know these people are so easy to convince to accept a new job. When the recruiter moves to a new company/firm, they go through the list and put all of their reliable job hoppers back into the queue.
I wonder what would be your take on my stints (non-tech Ops guy here, based out of Asia/Europe for reference). I have changed jobs 5 times in 6 years:
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
one long recent stint is sufficient to pass the filter.
Good old perverse incentives!
That's fine, every hiring place has arbitrary rules to cut down on resumes. You can't just guess at what those will be and use those guesses to base major Career decisions.
You'll always miss some stupid filters - it's why your job search is a numbers game.
You'll always miss some stupid filters - it's why your job search is a numbers game.
There's arbitrary rules, and there's common sense. Managers hate hiring. When they're creating job descriptions, looking at resumes, and setting up and conducting interviews, deep down they just want to do it once and have that person do the job for the next 10 years. If you've burned through job after job, you'll only be attractive to very new, green managers who haven't had to go through the hiring process before, or a team that knows its the kind of place that just recycles people. Neither of those situations suggests an ideal work place. I mean we can all do what we like, but our decisions have logical consequences.
Can you describe your company? Are you a startup? A big corp?
50 software engineers, 100 total employees, post-series D
So you're a small startup no one has heard of, you offer ~50% of the TC most of the engineers you reach out to currently have and you're likely not going to survive until the next round of funding if interest rates keep rising. Nice.
I've also been a hiring manager in similar environments and let me give you a bit of advice: don't boast about how strong your filter is. Your best bet at hiring talented engineers is to find great people who slip through the cracks everywhere else.
You're not looking for candidates who could also pass a FAANG process, anyone who could and is applying for your team has something very wrong with them. What you're looking for is that diamond in the rough. That candidate that went to community college instead of Stanford but has built some amazing projects on the side. Or, that person who is not a good fit for big corps and so has left 2-3 of them after a year, might be a bit cranky but is absolutely brilliant and will thrive on the right team with a bit of humanity thrown their way.
My best hires have been candidates that HR threw out.
I've also been a hiring manager in similar environments and let me give you a bit of advice: don't boast about how strong your filter is. Your best bet at hiring talented engineers is to find great people who slip through the cracks everywhere else.
You're not looking for candidates who could also pass a FAANG process, anyone who could and is applying for your team has something very wrong with them. What you're looking for is that diamond in the rough. That candidate that went to community college instead of Stanford but has built some amazing projects on the side. Or, that person who is not a good fit for big corps and so has left 2-3 of them after a year, might be a bit cranky but is absolutely brilliant and will thrive on the right team with a bit of humanity thrown their way.
My best hires have been candidates that HR threw out.
I'm also that hiring manager. First of all: HR is throwing out your best hires? Get on the same page with HR already. Next: Isn't FAANG all in a hiring freeze right now? All their staff looking at a 50% drop in their RSUs? Twitter's about to shed thousands of employees? There's no better time for startups to find people and pay them realistic salaries. The "hard to work with job hopper" isn't going to make the cut.
> So you're a small startup no one has heard of, you offer ~50% of the TC most of the engineers you reach out to currently have and you're likely not going to survive until the next round of funding if interest rates keep rising. Nice.
Ouch, why so harsh?
Startups are tough business and everyone knows it. Doesn't mean you should throw out your red flags in desperation, especially when the red flag in question is about the candidate's ability to commit to a company (or, their ability to identify a company or situation worth committing to).
Ouch, why so harsh?
Startups are tough business and everyone knows it. Doesn't mean you should throw out your red flags in desperation, especially when the red flag in question is about the candidate's ability to commit to a company (or, their ability to identify a company or situation worth committing to).
Thank you for the feedback.
I only have one question to everyone here who is complaining about “job hoppers”. Do you pay more than 5% increases in salary per year for performance?
If you don’t like job hoppers, be the change you want to see in the world: create a good team, pay well, and retain your employees.
If you don’t like job hoppers, be the change you want to see in the world: create a good team, pay well, and retain your employees.
As a BigCo hiring manager, I can tell you we are forced into a rough spot.
During perf/comp season, I get only a relatively small pool to allocate as salary/bonus/RSU increases.
And when hiring, every candidate worth hiring demands a total comp that exceeds my highest-performing engineers. Recruiting and even my own management chain is OK with giving in.
I've let several candidates go even though my management told me to just pay up, because it's unfair to the current team to introduce such an imbalance, and at any rate it causes me all kinds of headaches during the next perf/comp season when the new-hire wants a huge bonus on top of their huge hiring package.
During perf/comp season, I get only a relatively small pool to allocate as salary/bonus/RSU increases.
And when hiring, every candidate worth hiring demands a total comp that exceeds my highest-performing engineers. Recruiting and even my own management chain is OK with giving in.
I've let several candidates go even though my management told me to just pay up, because it's unfair to the current team to introduce such an imbalance, and at any rate it causes me all kinds of headaches during the next perf/comp season when the new-hire wants a huge bonus on top of their huge hiring package.
I agree. The most disingenuous framing of the conventional 3% inflation adjustment (which, as CPI has demonstrated, does not remotely cover inflation) is that it is "a merit increase which is based on performance". Companies who try and ignore data-driven CPI during performance discussions are just encouraging job hoppers.
Pretty much this - even if I like a job, what am I supposed to do when I'm getting a 5-10%+ pay cut every year?
A hiring manager that assumes businesses are, by default, good unless proven otherwise is a red flag for anyone looking to work at that business. Not only is it typically the opposite, but advertised jobs are disproportionately bad because people tend to hang onto the good ones. Workers are far more likely to cycle through a batch of bad jobs that, at best, nobody wants (and just as likely include unlawful worker exploitation) before finding a job that doesn't suck to the point of being abusive.
I can't tell that a job is toxic until I've been there a bit, any more than a hiring manager can tell that an employee is toxic until they've been there a bit.
I can't tell that a job is toxic until I've been there a bit, any more than a hiring manager can tell that an employee is toxic until they've been there a bit.
Questions about short tenure cuts both ways. The first couple of jobs I had were about 2 or 3 years. First company went broke, second company was some soul-crushing telecoms multinational and so I decided to quit and look for a new job.
My interview was for a business analyst role with some fairly large gas company. Ended up interviewing with some senior exec/business person who absolutely fixated on the tenure of my previous two roles. Like 40 minutes worth of questions as to why I was "only" in my previous roles for a couple of years. If the interviewer was getting red flags, I most certainly was - so I turned it around and asked what the expected tenure for this role was, and the answer was 10 to 15 years before any promotion. That was it for me, emailed HR directly after the interview saying I wanted to withdraw from the process.
Apparently, this got around and the boss of HR wanted to call me back in for a debrief. Didn't have the time, but I did email saying that questions about previous tenure were a major red flag for me. Didn't hear anything back after that, but I keep checking out the gas company's staff turnover on Glassdoor/LinkedIn and it seems like six months is closer to their expected tenure in that department.
My interview was for a business analyst role with some fairly large gas company. Ended up interviewing with some senior exec/business person who absolutely fixated on the tenure of my previous two roles. Like 40 minutes worth of questions as to why I was "only" in my previous roles for a couple of years. If the interviewer was getting red flags, I most certainly was - so I turned it around and asked what the expected tenure for this role was, and the answer was 10 to 15 years before any promotion. That was it for me, emailed HR directly after the interview saying I wanted to withdraw from the process.
Apparently, this got around and the boss of HR wanted to call me back in for a debrief. Didn't have the time, but I did email saying that questions about previous tenure were a major red flag for me. Didn't hear anything back after that, but I keep checking out the gas company's staff turnover on Glassdoor/LinkedIn and it seems like six months is closer to their expected tenure in that department.
If I don't think someone can bring significant value to the business by the second month at the latest, I won't hire them. And if I do hire someone and they don't end up bringing significant value to the business by the second month (or if they end up bringing negative value), then I let them go.
So if they make it even to just month three, it means the hire was well justified. If they leave any time after that, even if it's before their first anniversary, I wish them good luck on their next venture and thank them for the value they brought to the business during their tenure.
The length of their tenure for past positions is completely irrelevant in all of this, so doesn't factor into my hiring decisions at all. Frankly I don't understand why anyone would do any differently.
At the end of the day, I think preferring employees who are "loyal" to past employers is a sign of insecurity on the company/hiring manager's side. It means they secretly think their company is at best only average at retaining great employees, so they resort to biasing towards "loyal" employees as a clutch. I would suggest they work on employee retention instead of disqualifying perfectly good candidates for not having been "loyal" enough in the past.
Employees don't owe any "loyalty" to their employers. It's the employer's job to retain employees. When an employee leaves early, it's almost always because the employer was doing a shitty job at retention.
So if they make it even to just month three, it means the hire was well justified. If they leave any time after that, even if it's before their first anniversary, I wish them good luck on their next venture and thank them for the value they brought to the business during their tenure.
The length of their tenure for past positions is completely irrelevant in all of this, so doesn't factor into my hiring decisions at all. Frankly I don't understand why anyone would do any differently.
At the end of the day, I think preferring employees who are "loyal" to past employers is a sign of insecurity on the company/hiring manager's side. It means they secretly think their company is at best only average at retaining great employees, so they resort to biasing towards "loyal" employees as a clutch. I would suggest they work on employee retention instead of disqualifying perfectly good candidates for not having been "loyal" enough in the past.
Employees don't owe any "loyalty" to their employers. It's the employer's job to retain employees. When an employee leaves early, it's almost always because the employer was doing a shitty job at retention.
The clear divide in hiring preferences will be if it's owner operated or manager operated. Owner (like I suspect, you) will have clear goals, expectations, and fast ramp-up for the position. Manager wants cog_A in engine_B - predictable, loyal (to the hiring manager & their chain), good at office politics.
I am in the process of writing a paper about retention in relation to employee satisfaction with their leadership. One thing I learned is that for Switzerland which is the country for which I am writing my study the net rotation quota (how many people changed their job in the last 12 months) is around 25% for people under 24 years, and still around 20% for people under 39. I, personally, felt like I was changing jobs a lot, but what my research made me realize is that I am not changing jobs a lot. I am changing at an average rate. Long story short, even if you change jobs yearly or bi-annually, you are not changing jobs at an abnormal rate statistically.
Short tenure has always resulted in me getting massive raises by moving around. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but when my wife and I were 80k in the hole with student loans, wanted a house and a kid, I’ll just take whatever recruiter throws the most money at me. I had big bills to pay always going for 20-40k raises helped me pay them off.
If I run into an asshole once that’s normal. If I run into assholes all day, I’m the asshole.
It’s perfectly normal to have a few positions with short stints and as long as there’s a decent story it shouldn’t be a big deal. But if there’s a long string of 3-6 month positions and there’s not something clear (specialized consultant) then that’s a warning sign.
It’s perfectly normal to have a few positions with short stints and as long as there’s a decent story it shouldn’t be a big deal. But if there’s a long string of 3-6 month positions and there’s not something clear (specialized consultant) then that’s a warning sign.
Having short tenures (is 2 - 3 years short?) allowed me to be an IC for cool projects, to be CTO at a bootstrapped company, to be CTO of a VC backed company, to work on amazing projects around the world with interesting people, consult in big projects, to learn so many technologies and ways of doing things and on top of this to make so much money doing things I love, and have the autonomy to make my own life decisions.
This has happened while some people I know have been working on and maintaining the systems they got hired 15 years ago to build. Power to them. But they get paid like shit and I can’t really talk to them about the current technological landscape as they’ve been doing the same thing, in the same way without any disruptions. You’d expect them to be domain / tech-vertical masters, but unfortunately when you’ve been sliding in comfort for a decade, there’s a chance you lost most of your edge.
In my experience, there’s two (relevant to the point) kind of devs; the comfortable ones that you can rely on to basically almost never leave - they might be interested in politics but usually it’s just skimming the surface for that little extra cash or that little promotion; and the ones that need constant simulation, that mostly play politics with themselves and are a flight risk.
Ultimately, as a hiring manager you must make a decision knowing that whatever you choose you leave something on the table.
This has happened while some people I know have been working on and maintaining the systems they got hired 15 years ago to build. Power to them. But they get paid like shit and I can’t really talk to them about the current technological landscape as they’ve been doing the same thing, in the same way without any disruptions. You’d expect them to be domain / tech-vertical masters, but unfortunately when you’ve been sliding in comfort for a decade, there’s a chance you lost most of your edge.
In my experience, there’s two (relevant to the point) kind of devs; the comfortable ones that you can rely on to basically almost never leave - they might be interested in politics but usually it’s just skimming the surface for that little extra cash or that little promotion; and the ones that need constant simulation, that mostly play politics with themselves and are a flight risk.
Ultimately, as a hiring manager you must make a decision knowing that whatever you choose you leave something on the table.
My worry when I read your first paragraph is that you haven't stayed anywhere for long enough to see the consequences of your actions. Especially for senior positions: there's a reason why "seagull management" is a cliche.
It's a real problem, though -- as you say, there's no money or glory in building something for the long term.
It's a real problem, though -- as you say, there's no money or glory in building something for the long term.
> My worry when I read your first paragraph is that you haven't stayed anywhere for long enough to see the consequences of your actions.
This would be a valid concern, and truth be told I haven't, apart from on/off maintenance of the systems I built for various clients. While I agree that this is a problem, in my experience a decently built system is not going to need some amazing maintenance that only a select few senior engineers can do. It's usually run of the mill maintenance. 80% small changes to the application that realistically can be undertaken by most mid-level developers, and the occasional 20% larger changes to modules, architecture, deployment and / or infrastructure, which might indeed warrant more senior roles, and it's usually when I get a call to be involved. If anything, in my "n = 1" I have found that management is a lot more powerful in both setting up consequences, as well as handling them, than your junior / mid / senior ICs.
> Especially for senior positions: there's a reason why "seagull management" is a cliche.
I've helped build teams that are still performing long after I am gone, with mostly procedures put I consulted with, after seeing so many teams fail / win. But you are right, I wouldn't hire myself for a senior managerial position out of the box because I am just too much of a flight risk and I don't have a visible track-record for this role; I would also not disregard my skillset and breadth of experience when it's needed just because I don't tick a certain pattern.
My plan, whether stupid or not, is to continue accumulating experiences and knowledge for another 5 - 10 years (dare I dream 15?), moving to different projects (1 - 3 years) that suit my fancy, then move on and climb the ranks in a corporation from the bottom, all the way to top technical leadership. I feel a lot of companies will disregard me because I have this kind of fractured CV, but the one that won't might get a person with broad experience that also wants to 'settle down'. I am also very upfront and honest about my outlook.
> It's a real problem, though -- as you say, there's no money or glory in building something for the long term.
One of my most beloved projects (that I was involved in, not mine alone), is also one that I was paid the least amount of money on, and also I feel brings me the most glory; it involves a solution that saves lives daily. It's been running since a decade in production and the maintenance team has slowly dwindled down to only two people (one if I'm being realistic), and I don't think they'll need much more unless a revamp is required. Even though I love the project, my career would have looked a lot different if I chose to stay there and maintain the solution.
This would be a valid concern, and truth be told I haven't, apart from on/off maintenance of the systems I built for various clients. While I agree that this is a problem, in my experience a decently built system is not going to need some amazing maintenance that only a select few senior engineers can do. It's usually run of the mill maintenance. 80% small changes to the application that realistically can be undertaken by most mid-level developers, and the occasional 20% larger changes to modules, architecture, deployment and / or infrastructure, which might indeed warrant more senior roles, and it's usually when I get a call to be involved. If anything, in my "n = 1" I have found that management is a lot more powerful in both setting up consequences, as well as handling them, than your junior / mid / senior ICs.
> Especially for senior positions: there's a reason why "seagull management" is a cliche.
I've helped build teams that are still performing long after I am gone, with mostly procedures put I consulted with, after seeing so many teams fail / win. But you are right, I wouldn't hire myself for a senior managerial position out of the box because I am just too much of a flight risk and I don't have a visible track-record for this role; I would also not disregard my skillset and breadth of experience when it's needed just because I don't tick a certain pattern.
My plan, whether stupid or not, is to continue accumulating experiences and knowledge for another 5 - 10 years (dare I dream 15?), moving to different projects (1 - 3 years) that suit my fancy, then move on and climb the ranks in a corporation from the bottom, all the way to top technical leadership. I feel a lot of companies will disregard me because I have this kind of fractured CV, but the one that won't might get a person with broad experience that also wants to 'settle down'. I am also very upfront and honest about my outlook.
> It's a real problem, though -- as you say, there's no money or glory in building something for the long term.
One of my most beloved projects (that I was involved in, not mine alone), is also one that I was paid the least amount of money on, and also I feel brings me the most glory; it involves a solution that saves lives daily. It's been running since a decade in production and the maintenance team has slowly dwindled down to only two people (one if I'm being realistic), and I don't think they'll need much more unless a revamp is required. Even though I love the project, my career would have looked a lot different if I chose to stay there and maintain the solution.
The only thing that is really a red flag to evaluate the other side is this attitude of trying to find dumbed down solutions to evaluate situations that are full of nuances, and that cannot be analyzed with a series of simplified rules.
Sort tenures, resume holes, etc... do not matter in isolation and you don't always have to try to be the judge of the circumstances of someone else. Evaluate knowledge and attitude and past results, the rest is not for you to judge.
Sort tenures, resume holes, etc... do not matter in isolation and you don't always have to try to be the judge of the circumstances of someone else. Evaluate knowledge and attitude and past results, the rest is not for you to judge.
I like this article and I'm terrified of actually following through with the advice. I have multiple short tenures on my resume due to undiagnosed ADHD. Now I know I have it I'm making some small improvements but I can't see being honest about it being anything more than a massive red flag. Do employers actually care enough about a single employee to consider these things?
My ADHD was diagnosed last year, around the age of 30. I started medication in January and I've been able to turn my life around - I no longer have that awful feeling that my next crisis is constantly flying towards me, just waiting to happen.
I was open and honest in my interview with my current company about my ADHD, and that I didn't need any form of special treatment (with the exception of a keyed locker to keep my medication in - it's a controlled substance in the UK). Everyone was understanding about it, and I have a lot of support on offer from them, but ironically I no longer seem to need it, my medication has completely removed my symptoms.
Large companies these days want to appear welcoming and care about things like diversity. We have a disability, and it's important we see it that way. Without my medication, I struggle to integrate with society, I struggle to focus on tasks (or obsess over them to an unhealthy degree).
There's also a lot to be said for hiring developers with ADHD who are being treated: We spent decades learning behaviors to allow us to focus on tasks, once we're being treated, the issues goes away but the behaviors remain. It can be a superpower sometimes.
I spent my life wondering how people focus on work for 9 hours a day: It turns out that they don't, but decades of trying to emulate that combined with "performing enhancing" medication means that we _can_.
I was open and honest in my interview with my current company about my ADHD, and that I didn't need any form of special treatment (with the exception of a keyed locker to keep my medication in - it's a controlled substance in the UK). Everyone was understanding about it, and I have a lot of support on offer from them, but ironically I no longer seem to need it, my medication has completely removed my symptoms.
Large companies these days want to appear welcoming and care about things like diversity. We have a disability, and it's important we see it that way. Without my medication, I struggle to integrate with society, I struggle to focus on tasks (or obsess over them to an unhealthy degree).
There's also a lot to be said for hiring developers with ADHD who are being treated: We spent decades learning behaviors to allow us to focus on tasks, once we're being treated, the issues goes away but the behaviors remain. It can be a superpower sometimes.
I spent my life wondering how people focus on work for 9 hours a day: It turns out that they don't, but decades of trying to emulate that combined with "performing enhancing" medication means that we _can_.
Funny how raising red flags may correlate with plain pay raise strategy.
It's a known fact, that 2+ yr tenured workers will get smaller salary bumps for loyalty or staying with the company. And the next guy walking in may have a significantly bigger salary for the same title and set of responsibilities.
I was this "next guy walking in" and during kitchen banters with colleagues it was revealed they have had a 30% smaller compensations. Since that day I never trust it's in company's interest to fairly bump salaries of tenured staff. They'd rather get a new guy and pay him more. And it's simple economy: giving 15% raise to X members with base comp Y every year is much more expensive than, say, give a 150-180% base of Y to a single fresh hire.
From my point of view, a raise flag is not getting a decent pay raise and not getting any articulation on why cloaked as annual company policy et cetra.
It's a known fact, that 2+ yr tenured workers will get smaller salary bumps for loyalty or staying with the company. And the next guy walking in may have a significantly bigger salary for the same title and set of responsibilities.
I was this "next guy walking in" and during kitchen banters with colleagues it was revealed they have had a 30% smaller compensations. Since that day I never trust it's in company's interest to fairly bump salaries of tenured staff. They'd rather get a new guy and pay him more. And it's simple economy: giving 15% raise to X members with base comp Y every year is much more expensive than, say, give a 150-180% base of Y to a single fresh hire.
From my point of view, a raise flag is not getting a decent pay raise and not getting any articulation on why cloaked as annual company policy et cetra.
I once had an interview where the guy genuinely complained about me skipping around jobs. My average tenure was four years.
I mostly agree with the article. For me, as long as I see one job where you saw something through and got a promotion in it, I will overlook several short stints at other places. (I’m just trying to avoid the “talks big, works tiny” pattern or someone who will leave every time someone else offers them 3 nickels more.)
I wish I could say. I think it depends really. I like jumping jobs around every 2 years. If I don't like the people I'll jump sooner but in 12 years that's only happened once. You gain perspective with every new company and industry which seems valuable on paper. It's like traveling. No idea how this compares to sticking it out but I've gotten use to being new, doing interviews, and having to start over with no context. I've worked in telecoms, education, social media, aviation, and agricultural insurance. Different tech stacks and different cultures each with different clients (younger tech suavy web natives vs old farmers who dont know to scroll to get to the bottom of a page). Security passes, controlled goods and smokers at the door who come on in behind you when they're not suppose to be there vs 20 something year olds making the rules (you can imagine). Ive been treated well and poorly. I like the broad range of things I've gotten to see going job to job.
The main catalyst for leaving is pay. If i could find another company that would pay me more I'd present that to my current employer and if they couldnt match it then off I go. Usually I wait a while to start looking.
I saw one comment hear talking about maintenance and consequences and that's interesting! For myself, I gravitate to greenfield work. Startups and the like. Your code doesnt always live a long life in those environments and prehaps this shields me from the worst of the maintainability issues. Ive actually grown distasteful for to much "maintenance programming efforts" as I've seen months of such work disappear after a pivot (replaced a series of sequential forms with a table view once after the team spent months getting the forms right. Sad.) I believe that 'bad code' that takes you from 0 to 1 is a good headache to have. I've also seen people call code bad when i saw no issues with it (terria.js) and went on a months long run to rewrite a frontend months from release. Went about as well as expected. Code got written to replace already working code. No comment on whether it was better or not but my opinion is a likely no. There's a level of subjectivity to code quality that i think gets lost on people sometimes.
The main catalyst for leaving is pay. If i could find another company that would pay me more I'd present that to my current employer and if they couldnt match it then off I go. Usually I wait a while to start looking.
I saw one comment hear talking about maintenance and consequences and that's interesting! For myself, I gravitate to greenfield work. Startups and the like. Your code doesnt always live a long life in those environments and prehaps this shields me from the worst of the maintainability issues. Ive actually grown distasteful for to much "maintenance programming efforts" as I've seen months of such work disappear after a pivot (replaced a series of sequential forms with a table view once after the team spent months getting the forms right. Sad.) I believe that 'bad code' that takes you from 0 to 1 is a good headache to have. I've also seen people call code bad when i saw no issues with it (terria.js) and went on a months long run to rewrite a frontend months from release. Went about as well as expected. Code got written to replace already working code. No comment on whether it was better or not but my opinion is a likely no. There's a level of subjectivity to code quality that i think gets lost on people sometimes.
I see an unrecognized bad pattern here: managers who make people leave early.
And of course you should be proud that people are leaving early some job just to get into your team!
Discussing "short tenure" as a problem is, well, short-sighted. Nobody leaves his job when the job is ok. And when the job is not OK and you now it (yes, this exists), then it is on you as a manager to make people stay anyway.
I see another pattern especially in youngster IT managers: they try to develop psycho-powers to understand how humans are programmed - this is just magical thinking. Leave the psychology to the professionals and just do your job - manage your project in a way that people like working there.
And of course you should be proud that people are leaving early some job just to get into your team!
Discussing "short tenure" as a problem is, well, short-sighted. Nobody leaves his job when the job is ok. And when the job is not OK and you now it (yes, this exists), then it is on you as a manager to make people stay anyway.
I see another pattern especially in youngster IT managers: they try to develop psycho-powers to understand how humans are programmed - this is just magical thinking. Leave the psychology to the professionals and just do your job - manage your project in a way that people like working there.
I am not interested in hiring someone who doesn't want to stick around for 2 reasons: First, as others have said, it takes time to learn an organization, far longer than learning say, a new programming language. Someone who only sticks around for a year is barely getting their feet wet and is only going to be making surface contributions. Not to mention they usually check out a month or so before they leave.
Second, hiring is a pain. It's time consuming and expensive. I don't want to be doing it any more than I need to, and someone who joins with the intent of leaving in a year is only making my job harder.
This pain also scales with the size of the department.
If a company fills an entire team with job hoppers who leave after a year, the entire team will turn over every year.
Revolving door companies are terrible to work for because everyone around you is relatively inexperienced at their job. You don’t really want to invest too much in work relationships because you know everyone is just waiting to hop somewhere else. Eventually, you get sick of it and want to leave, too. In a way, hiring too many job hoppers becomes contagious as the turnover burns out the remaining employees who have to shoulder more work simply because they’re the only ones who have been around long enough to have the knowledge necessary to get things done.
If a company fills an entire team with job hoppers who leave after a year, the entire team will turn over every year.
Revolving door companies are terrible to work for because everyone around you is relatively inexperienced at their job. You don’t really want to invest too much in work relationships because you know everyone is just waiting to hop somewhere else. Eventually, you get sick of it and want to leave, too. In a way, hiring too many job hoppers becomes contagious as the turnover burns out the remaining employees who have to shoulder more work simply because they’re the only ones who have been around long enough to have the knowledge necessary to get things done.
I wonder what would be your take on my stints (non-tech Ops guy here, based out of Asia/Europe for reference). I have changed jobs 5 times in 6 years:
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
# Company 1: First stint after university at a Bank. Management development program. Left after 4 months to join a startup backed by renowned European VC/accelerator. 4 months
#Company 2: Technically an internship here which was supposed to be full-time after 6 months. 3 months in, co-founder who was also my hiring manager died - startup was on the verge of sinking. 5 months.
#Company 3: Ops role with plenty of ownership at Food-delivery company (think Doordash for Europe). Left after 1 year due to personal reasons (had to move back to Asia due to medical reasons in my family) Good impact here though.
#Company 4: Asian unicorn. Impactful role, scaled a new business vertical to $xM ARR fwiw. Left after 3 years to change industry.
#Company 5: Booming startup that ultimately did not succeed. Very short time but still made some strides. 3 months. Laid off along with 75% of the company.
Now, what's your take if you were to look at my resume?
As you can see, I had just 1 long stint so far (3 years). My only saving grace is that my projects were at least somewhat notable. Especially in the current climate where entire teams can be laid off and many orgs are downsizing, I feel insecure that another short stint < 1-2 years would be a red flag to recruiters and Hiring Manager - circumstances notwithstanding.
My first question for you would be why do you want to work at my company? You like working at early-stage startups, and that's not this company. My second question is what would keep you working at my company when something else catches your interest? I would be extremely concerned that you would get bored with a non-startup and leave after a short time for the next big thing around the corner. The 3-year stint is a good point for sticking around, but if the only thing that keeps you in one role is growing the company to $xM, you're probably not going to be happy here to begin with.
I cannot speak about your specific company - I don't know which one you work for. Nonetheless, I would clarify few things
- I like working on initiatives that yield high impact. There's a correlation between "your work having more observable impact" in early-stage startups. For what its worth, I have worked at a public startup (one of the largest companies in its sector) and a unicorn startup: at both places, my appetite for working on "high ownership projects" was fulfilled.
- I don't jump for "the next big thing" - if that was the case, I'd jump from crypto to AI to Web3 startups but thats not the case. For me, the role/function is critical. I know for a fact that I won't do well at a bank (which is where my career started from) because I'd get bored. But a larger org like Adidas or Mercedes-Bez or Booking.com etc that work on some interesting problems? Sign me up!
- "but if the only thing that keeps you in one role is growing the company to $xM" - Not true. I do love high-impact projects - I am certain I am not alone in it. If anything, I have a demonstrated streak of ownership and bringing results. But, looking at the results, I was asked by the SVP to help with few different tasks (Expansion in a key geography; partnerships across EMEA/APAC; and product ownership and implementation of a 3rd party SaaS tool).
Open to feedback here.
- I like working on initiatives that yield high impact. There's a correlation between "your work having more observable impact" in early-stage startups. For what its worth, I have worked at a public startup (one of the largest companies in its sector) and a unicorn startup: at both places, my appetite for working on "high ownership projects" was fulfilled.
- I don't jump for "the next big thing" - if that was the case, I'd jump from crypto to AI to Web3 startups but thats not the case. For me, the role/function is critical. I know for a fact that I won't do well at a bank (which is where my career started from) because I'd get bored. But a larger org like Adidas or Mercedes-Bez or Booking.com etc that work on some interesting problems? Sign me up!
- "but if the only thing that keeps you in one role is growing the company to $xM" - Not true. I do love high-impact projects - I am certain I am not alone in it. If anything, I have a demonstrated streak of ownership and bringing results. But, looking at the results, I was asked by the SVP to help with few different tasks (Expansion in a key geography; partnerships across EMEA/APAC; and product ownership and implementation of a 3rd party SaaS tool).
Open to feedback here.
I had semi-short tenure at my last few jobs… a couple of startups and a couple of genuinely awful places to work… no real pushback during the interview process and think I landed somewhere GREAT.
average tenure at last 4 jobs or about 18 months?
average tenure at last 4 jobs or about 18 months?
I work at startups. I’ve been let go a lot, and the rest were soft layoffs (“your entire department should start looking for jobs”).
I “quit” quit once, and that was because I felt my job was done and I wasn’t doing anyone favors my sticking around.
Basic startup stuff.
Startups rebrand, refocus, deploy new products, and make drastic changes all the time.
I like startup work, and hope one day I’ll be in the “next big thing”, but I’m also fine being the guy who left Netflix in 2009 because they preferred Oracle cloud to Cassandra.
I “quit” quit once, and that was because I felt my job was done and I wasn’t doing anyone favors my sticking around.
Basic startup stuff.
Startups rebrand, refocus, deploy new products, and make drastic changes all the time.
I like startup work, and hope one day I’ll be in the “next big thing”, but I’m also fine being the guy who left Netflix in 2009 because they preferred Oracle cloud to Cassandra.
I'm a hiring manager (not at a tech company, FWIW) for college-degreed, relatively senior professionals. If your resume shows a short job, say, less than a year, I won't care. If the last five jobs you held down have been for less than a year each, it goes in the circular file.
Maybe I'm missing out on good people, but I have more candidates than I can handle already, and it's a pretty abnormal pattern in the field.
Maybe I'm missing out on good people, but I have more candidates than I can handle already, and it's a pretty abnormal pattern in the field.
Recently made the mistake of hiring someone with a few short stints. Each had a “good explanation”. 9 not-so-productive months later, they’re gone… Will be taking your approach in the future.
It's basically the old doctor joke:
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I touch my shoulder. And it hurts when I touch my knee. And when I touch my head. And when I touch my other arm." Doctor: "Your finger's broken."
Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I touch my shoulder. And it hurts when I touch my knee. And when I touch my head. And when I touch my other arm." Doctor: "Your finger's broken."
I have found at 43 that I have ADHD and that there is no cure. I have left the employment world a few years ago in favor of contracting, but it’s still very hard to read that I have to change.
There is no changing my condition, the only thing I can do is travel from rejection to rejection until I find a niche where my skills outweigh my handicap, or I collect an addiction that kills me.
There is no changing my condition, the only thing I can do is travel from rejection to rejection until I find a niche where my skills outweigh my handicap, or I collect an addiction that kills me.
>> I think the reasoning is some sort of unspoken value of “loyalty” – an expectation that there’s an implicit agreement to “stick it out” even if things get bad. This is hot garbage. If you want the people that you hire to stay, do it by building a great workplace and paying people well – not by finding staff who are too timid to leave bad situations.
I liked that part although it seems to me that the unspoken truth of management is that they are overseers of the workforce. In some places, where the workforce is educated and its qualifications rare on the market, it entails "building a great workplace" but in others it totally entails finding staff that are "too timid to leave bad situations". In the end of the day, it making a profit entails miserable work relationships and everyone feeling sad and frustrated... oh well
I liked that part although it seems to me that the unspoken truth of management is that they are overseers of the workforce. In some places, where the workforce is educated and its qualifications rare on the market, it entails "building a great workplace" but in others it totally entails finding staff that are "too timid to leave bad situations". In the end of the day, it making a profit entails miserable work relationships and everyone feeling sad and frustrated... oh well
It’s fine as long as you don’t have a history of short tenures because then you’re the common factor.
I've rarely stayed with a position longer than 2 years.
For me, it's usually a simple matter of economics - why would I stay at Company A if my bonus/raise barely overcomes inflation, but Company B is offering me 50k more per year?
There's also the false advertising factor. Almost every company I've worked for has promised an exciting environment developing new things, and in reality after a few months almost all of my time is spent maintain some crusty old platform that no one wants to improve again. If I'm not getting the experience and career growth I signed up for, there's a lot less motivation to stay.
For me, it's usually a simple matter of economics - why would I stay at Company A if my bonus/raise barely overcomes inflation, but Company B is offering me 50k more per year?
There's also the false advertising factor. Almost every company I've worked for has promised an exciting environment developing new things, and in reality after a few months almost all of my time is spent maintain some crusty old platform that no one wants to improve again. If I'm not getting the experience and career growth I signed up for, there's a lot less motivation to stay.
As a hiring manager, and a professional who worked their way up. I would add if you leave because a place is terrible… leave out what you think is terrible about your current or previous company in your new interview. Focus on the positives and your professional growth. It is almost always a red flag if someone focuses on their pain points with the previous org. After you’re hired you can for sure bring up a lesson you learned from the previous org that is related to a successful outcome you want to create with your new team.
> leave out what you think is terrible about your current or previous company in your new interview
Are you saying that one shouldn't say to their potential new manager: "Every manager I've ever had was an idiot who didn't recognize how good my ideas were?" ;-)
Are you saying that one shouldn't say to their potential new manager: "Every manager I've ever had was an idiot who didn't recognize how good my ideas were?" ;-)
Obviously… if you’re that smart you would have picked me as a manager and never quit ;-)
Something like “it wasn’t a good fit” is always a valid answer for a short tenure. Your interviewer may try to dig deeper, but they’ll respect your refusal to be more specific. Alternatively you can just leave that position off your résumé entirely. In tech it’s normal to take 3-12 months off every decade or so, so it probably won’t even raise any eyebrows.
If you have only one short stint job, just leave it off. If anyone even notices and asks, you can say, "yeah, seemed like a good idea to take some time off and not get burned out." Maybe not your idea to take the time off, but in ay case...
I've talked to some strong candidates with some short-stint history. I think including it, and being candid about the rationale, could be mutually beneficial. Hiring is expensive, and hiring the wrong person is tough. If the prospective employer can identify that the "short stint" reason would apply to them as well, it's best for everyone to part ways immediately. If not, that's good news for both of you!
random reactions:
- "lack of loyalty" as the article called out is pure BS, but a very real BS specially among small- medium-sized orgs. I ask: how can you even developed loyalty over a short period of time. You may lack the perseverance to enable loyalty, but this says nothing about being able to be loyal
- I guess short stints here means you quitting rather than being poached because From where I am, updating the linkedin profile after switching jobs make you "hotter" for recruiter and propositions follow for first couple of months increasing the chance for another short stint
- "lack of loyalty" as the article called out is pure BS, but a very real BS specially among small- medium-sized orgs. I ask: how can you even developed loyalty over a short period of time. You may lack the perseverance to enable loyalty, but this says nothing about being able to be loyal
- I guess short stints here means you quitting rather than being poached because From where I am, updating the linkedin profile after switching jobs make you "hotter" for recruiter and propositions follow for first couple of months increasing the chance for another short stint
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As a hiring manager I view even a single short run as a potential red flag —- and like any such finding I ask about it versus simply rejecting outright. 3+ and I ignore the resume.
My first few jobs were very short tenure, because I was afraid to ask for fair salary, it was easier to just leave.
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Excellent article. Thank you for this.
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I can come up with a reasonably convincing story for every individual Job about why I quit that one. But taken together, there's no reasonable story that would convince a hiring manager.
It comes down to this: I hate being an employee. I want to work on my own projects on my own terms. This is the only way I can find work that is worth doing.
That said, the wording of the article is weird.
> If your job is terrible, you can leave
As if you're affirming an anxious person.
Listen, yes, you can leave, but you shoule know that there absolutely will be consequences for leaving too early.
Fewer employers will consider hiring you.
For one thing, I have relatives that got into the tech scene after me, but rack in much higher salaries than me. I'm not sure what it is, but probably staying in their jobs for more than two years helps.
If your goal in life is to find a stable employment, then you should absolutely not "just leave".
For me, that was never my goal in life (and frankly I can't understand people whose goal in life is that). So I had no qualms about leaving when I found that I lost the will to continue working the job.
That said, I still hesitated and took my time. I still cared about finishing whatever project it is I'm working on. I felt a sense of responsibility for the company, because they are paying me to do a job, and quitting half way through is just not the right thing to do.