4 ms·

- lots of short stints employment. It costs a lot to find, hire and on board someone. Ideally I’d like them to stick around for a while. - lists of buzzwords w

- lots of short stints employment. It costs a lot to find, hire and on board someone. Ideally I’d like them to stick around for a while. - lists of buzzwords without clear descriptions of what they actually did. I don’t care about “fashionable” terms. I wanted heard about concrete things they’ve done. - poor formatting. If they don’t care enough to make their resume look clean and neat, why would I expect them to care enough to be thorough in other jobs. I don’t care too much about the aesthetic style of the resume as long as it is clear and consistent.

whoisjuan 8y ago
What's your definition of "short stint"? Less than 1 year?
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  I was going to ask that as well! What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer? Given that startups are way crazier, require way longer hours, and are less stable financially and politically than normally established companies. Asking because I've worked for several startups and tech management has changed several times in a year for both of them, they loose and gain huge streams of revenue rapidly, have worked burnout hours at times at all of them. All factors that have made me seriously question my employment there at times but the knowledge I'm gaining makes it to good to give up for now.
  - pm 8y ago
    This is highly contextual. I've got a series of 3 month stints on my CV as I'm a contractor. I usually come in to fix things, but by the time they call me in most of the money has been spent on shitty agencies.
    - bowlich 8y ago
      If you're a contractor wouldn't your resume show continuous employment for one company (yourself) with each 3-month stint listed as a client?
  - bigiain 8y ago
    This: https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-employee-tenure https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-e... Suggests median tenures at small tech companies can be as low as 1.5years. For me - it depends on the stage of career a candidate is at. If you're not job hopping every 2-3 years in the early stages of your career (say, first 8-10 years out of school), you're without doubt losing out monetarily (which may indicate a lack of ambition). On the other hand, if you've not managed to hold down a job for over two years (or any job for over 18 months), you ring bells in my head of maybe just having managed to not get let go for lack of performance and bailing out before it makes it to your record. Those are both offset of some of your roles are listed as contracts (but rest assured I'll be getting your references or LinkedIn or network-sourced ex-colleagues checked to make sure they don't describe them as permanent full time roles).
  - fjeuplos 8y ago
    "What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer?" ... If your a contractor, 6 months or more.
- spooneybarger 8y ago
  mine is less than 2
- notyourwork 8y ago
  It depends on how many jobs you've had and how old you are. If you have 3 jobs each being 1 year that would be a red flag. If you have 10 years of experience, 1 job for a year and the other 2 split across 9 years I would be less concerned. An outlier versus a pattern is where I see a bad situation versus a concern for hire. Personally, spending <18 months in a company or on a team doesn't yield enough time to accomplish much. It also doesn't afford you ability to learn from your mistakes and mature.
  - kstrauser 8y ago
    It also highly depends on where you were working. Bouncing between Google and Amazon and Cisco and IBM at 9 month intervals is a pretty big WTF. Going between a few series A startups in the same period of time might be perfectly explainable.
    - notyourwork 8y ago
      I would agree with that, my point of reference is from working the last 3 years at one of those and finding lots of mediocre engineers who bounce from team to team or company to company every 12-18 months. They deliver, leave technical debt and move on. Its a facade of a good engineer and its hard to catch until you are the one cleaning up the mess or replacing the mess.
  - matt_the_bass 8y ago
    > Personally, spending <18 months in a company or on a team doesn't yield enough time to accomplish much. It also doesn't afford you ability to learn from your mistakes and mature. This is a great way of explaining why I think lots is short stints reflect poorly.
- erichurkman 8y ago
  If it's short, put an explanation. If it's contract work, label it as such. "Example, Inc. January 2018 - May 2018 (contract)." If the company folded or otherwise, you may opt to indicate it, or mention in your reach out to the company.
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  Depends on context. If someone is a consultant/contractor, short stints are ok. But then have a clear reason why they want to go back to standard employee. If someone has a number of longer stints, then a short one here or there is no big deal. But I want their resume to tell a story. Don’t be afraid of explaining circumstances in a cover letter.
  - muzani 8y ago
    I have this kind of hero syndrome where I like to join dying projects to try to save them. Which means I join a lot of companies for short stints, and most of these projects fail. It's a bit hard to justify in a cover letter without looking defensive.
    - cema 8y ago
      So what do you do? How do you win attention of the hiring manager? I am asking because I may have (had) the same problem.
- lhorie 8y ago
  For me it's 3 or more jobs back to back with <1 yr duration each and irregular durations. Usually, their LinkedIn also boasts being CEO of their own company for an overlapping duration of time.
bb88 8y ago
> lots of short stints employment. It costs a lot to find, hire and on board someone. Ideally I’d like them to stick around for a while. This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere. > - poor formatting. If they don’t care enough to make their resume look clean and neat, why would I expect them to care enough to be thorough in other jobs. I don’t care too much about the aesthetic style of the resume as long as it is clear and consistent. As neat and tidy as the resume is, certain employers are looking for buzzwords. So if those buzzwords aren't on the resume, it gets to meet the circular file.
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  > This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere. Why do you say this? Surely underpaying people is one way to make them leave but not the only reason. Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encouraged to move along sooner rather than later. Lots of possible reasons. Most do not signal the type of person I want to hire.
  - bb88 8y ago
    > Why do you say this? I say it because I keep seeing articles like this one [1] all the time: "Workers who stay with a company longer than two years are said to get paid 50% less." And that matches my personal experience. After spending 14 years at a company giving me 3 percent raises year after year, I've switched jobs frequently, but usually with large pay raises with every job. 8 years out and 4 jobs later now I'm making double the salary I was at the long term job I held. > Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encouraged to move along sooner rather than later. Lots of possible reasons. Most do not signal the type of person I want to hire. Sure, much of what you say is true. I think it may have been valid maybe 20 years ago. Lately, though, I think people want to stay relevant in a field with so much churn it makes your head spin. So they see the leading edge of where tech is going, and want to get there first. And if a company has tagged someone as the "Java engineer", it can be hard for that person if they want to switch to ruby on rails, or they want to expand into machine learning but their company doesn't need the skill (or they already have experts doing that work.) As for me, I've learned to let a technology get established before jumping into it, but even at that rate, the tech I learned 5 years ago, is not relevant today. In college, what I learned lasted maybe 15 years. (Yeah, I'm old). So yeah, my resume would surely hit your circular file. But I'm in good company I suppose. The mean job length at google is only 1.1 years even though 84% of people are highly satisfied. [2] Compare this with Eastman Kodak where the median is 20 years, and only 45% of the employees are highly satisfied. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/you-should-plan-on-switching-jobs-every-three-years-for-the-rest-of-your- https://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/you-should-plan-on-switc... [2] https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full-list https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full...
fjeuplos 8y ago
"lots of short stints employment" - what do you consider short?
ManlyBread 8y ago
I have two "short stints" on my resume. Staying in these companies would hurt me a lot more in the long term. It's hard to convince the next employer that you're worth hiring when you're out of touch with modern development practices and your relevant experience is limited to personal projects you did after 8h of wading through mountains of spaghetti code. Last 6 months I have been working on a system which uses SQL stored procedures for everything (including business logic and reinventing parsing of XML and JSON - poorly). Every single time I mention this solution the interviewers raise their eyebrows. Not a single interviewer has expressed any positive feelings about the solution. Am I really expected to stick along working on such an atrocity just so I could put >1 years of a resume?

whoisjuan 8y ago

What's your definition of "short stint"? Less than 1 year?

nickthemagicman 8y ago
I was going to ask that as well! What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer? Given that startups are way crazier, require way longer hours, and are less stable financially and politically than normally established companies. Asking because I've worked for several startups and tech management has changed several times in a year for both of them, they loose and gain huge streams of revenue rapidly, have worked burnout hours at times at all of them. All factors that have made me seriously question my employment there at times but the knowledge I'm gaining makes it to good to give up for now.
- pm 8y ago
  This is highly contextual. I've got a series of 3 month stints on my CV as I'm a contractor. I usually come in to fix things, but by the time they call me in most of the money has been spent on shitty agencies.
  - bowlich 8y ago
    If you're a contractor wouldn't your resume show continuous employment for one company (yourself) with each 3-month stint listed as a client?
- bigiain 8y ago
  This: https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-employee-tenure https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-e... Suggests median tenures at small tech companies can be as low as 1.5years. For me - it depends on the stage of career a candidate is at. If you're not job hopping every 2-3 years in the early stages of your career (say, first 8-10 years out of school), you're without doubt losing out monetarily (which may indicate a lack of ambition). On the other hand, if you've not managed to hold down a job for over two years (or any job for over 18 months), you ring bells in my head of maybe just having managed to not get let go for lack of performance and bailing out before it makes it to your record. Those are both offset of some of your roles are listed as contracts (but rest assured I'll be getting your references or LinkedIn or network-sourced ex-colleagues checked to make sure they don't describe them as permanent full time roles).
- fjeuplos 8y ago
  "What's the HN community's view of a reasonable amount of time at an employer?" ... If your a contractor, 6 months or more.
spooneybarger 8y ago
mine is less than 2
notyourwork 8y ago
It depends on how many jobs you've had and how old you are. If you have 3 jobs each being 1 year that would be a red flag. If you have 10 years of experience, 1 job for a year and the other 2 split across 9 years I would be less concerned. An outlier versus a pattern is where I see a bad situation versus a concern for hire. Personally, spending <18 months in a company or on a team doesn't yield enough time to accomplish much. It also doesn't afford you ability to learn from your mistakes and mature.
- kstrauser 8y ago
  It also highly depends on where you were working. Bouncing between Google and Amazon and Cisco and IBM at 9 month intervals is a pretty big WTF. Going between a few series A startups in the same period of time might be perfectly explainable.
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    I would agree with that, my point of reference is from working the last 3 years at one of those and finding lots of mediocre engineers who bounce from team to team or company to company every 12-18 months. They deliver, leave technical debt and move on. Its a facade of a good engineer and its hard to catch until you are the one cleaning up the mess or replacing the mess.
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  > Personally, spending <18 months in a company or on a team doesn't yield enough time to accomplish much. It also doesn't afford you ability to learn from your mistakes and mature. This is a great way of explaining why I think lots is short stints reflect poorly.
erichurkman 8y ago
If it's short, put an explanation. If it's contract work, label it as such. "Example, Inc. January 2018 - May 2018 (contract)." If the company folded or otherwise, you may opt to indicate it, or mention in your reach out to the company.
matt_the_bass 8y ago
Depends on context. If someone is a consultant/contractor, short stints are ok. But then have a clear reason why they want to go back to standard employee. If someone has a number of longer stints, then a short one here or there is no big deal. But I want their resume to tell a story. Don’t be afraid of explaining circumstances in a cover letter.
- muzani 8y ago
  I have this kind of hero syndrome where I like to join dying projects to try to save them. Which means I join a lot of companies for short stints, and most of these projects fail. It's a bit hard to justify in a cover letter without looking defensive.
  - cema 8y ago
    So what do you do? How do you win attention of the hiring manager? I am asking because I may have (had) the same problem.
lhorie 8y ago
For me it's 3 or more jobs back to back with <1 yr duration each and irregular durations. Usually, their LinkedIn also boasts being CEO of their own company for an overlapping duration of time.

bb88 8y ago

> lots of short stints employment. It costs a lot to find, hire and on board someone. Ideally I’d like them to stick around for a while. This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere. > - poor formatting. If they don’t care enough to make their resume look clean and neat, why would I expect them to care enough to be thorough in other jobs. I don’t care too much about the aesthetic style of the resume as long as it is clear and consistent. As neat and tidy as the resume is, certain employers are looking for buzzwords. So if those buzzwords aren't on the resume, it gets to meet the circular file.

matt_the_bass 8y ago
> This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere. Why do you say this? Surely underpaying people is one way to make them leave but not the only reason. Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encouraged to move along sooner rather than later. Lots of possible reasons. Most do not signal the type of person I want to hire.
- bb88 8y ago
  > Why do you say this? I say it because I keep seeing articles like this one [1] all the time: "Workers who stay with a company longer than two years are said to get paid 50% less." And that matches my personal experience. After spending 14 years at a company giving me 3 percent raises year after year, I've switched jobs frequently, but usually with large pay raises with every job. 8 years out and 4 jobs later now I'm making double the salary I was at the long term job I held. > Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encouraged to move along sooner rather than later. Lots of possible reasons. Most do not signal the type of person I want to hire. Sure, much of what you say is true. I think it may have been valid maybe 20 years ago. Lately, though, I think people want to stay relevant in a field with so much churn it makes your head spin. So they see the leading edge of where tech is going, and want to get there first. And if a company has tagged someone as the "Java engineer", it can be hard for that person if they want to switch to ruby on rails, or they want to expand into machine learning but their company doesn't need the skill (or they already have experts doing that work.) As for me, I've learned to let a technology get established before jumping into it, but even at that rate, the tech I learned 5 years ago, is not relevant today. In college, what I learned lasted maybe 15 years. (Yeah, I'm old). So yeah, my resume would surely hit your circular file. But I'm in good company I suppose. The mean job length at google is only 1.1 years even though 84% of people are highly satisfied. [2] Compare this with Eastman Kodak where the median is 20 years, and only 45% of the employees are highly satisfied. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/you-should-plan-on-switching-jobs-every-three-years-for-the-rest-of-your- https://www.fastcompany.com/3055035/you-should-plan-on-switc... [2] https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full-list https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty/full...

fjeuplos 8y ago

"lots of short stints employment" - what do you consider short?

ManlyBread 8y ago

I have two "short stints" on my resume. Staying in these companies would hurt me a lot more in the long term. It's hard to convince the next employer that you're worth hiring when you're out of touch with modern development practices and your relevant experience is limited to personal projects you did after 8h of wading through mountains of spaghetti code. Last 6 months I have been working on a system which uses SQL stored procedures for everything (including business logic and reinventing parsing of XML and JSON - poorly). Every single time I mention this solution the interviewers raise their eyebrows. Not a single interviewer has expressed any positive feelings about the solution. Am I really expected to stick along working on such an atrocity just so I could put >1 years of a resume?