19 ms·

Job-hopping increases, in possible boon to wage growth and productivity

140 points by uptown 8y ago

geetfun 8y ago
There are certainly many definitions of “winning”. I can only speak for myself: quitting my old job lowered my pay, but resulted in my being a lot happier and having more time to spend with my kids. If anything, the current trend and the number of people willing to jump jobs has helped people like myself take the leap into something new — something I might not have done without seeing others do.
- jsgo 8y ago
  That’s awesome. I enjoy working for the company I do now, but even with the previous one, only when the company started experiencing issues (like selling off contracts and about 75% of the employees) did I have the guts to move to something else as I wanted to remain in a “steady” job for my daughter. That is, probably would’ve loved to with the previous place, but didn’t have the confidence to.
exotree 8y ago
I am thrilled to hear this. If you can't hold on to your employees, pay them more, or give them working conditions like WFH or an easier commute, then you don't deserve to have them! That said, I sort of hate this headline. These people aren't quitters. They're ambitious, and they want more.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  It seems like these days people have to "move around to move up", or companies have a problem creating opportunities for advancement that don't involve promoting people to middle management, if one can even call that a promotion. Of course that's only one part of the bigger picture.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    Is there a word or a phrase whereby the Peter Principle takes such a hold in the structure of management that it no longer becomes possible to even promote? The 'Peters' get to a position and create an artificial ceiling where potentially more capable would-be managers don't get promoted because their manager is a bit too dim to realize there are people languishing underneath them?
    - flukus 8y ago
      I think this would be territory covered by the dead sea effect: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d... IME this is in full swing at just about every company complaining about job hoppers.
      - iamdave 8y ago
        That may be the best description of the phenomenon I've described. I lived that. It was unbearable-stayed around way longer than I should have because I did genuinely and truly believe in the mission of the company. They gave us reason to and backed it up-but after a while, well yeah the water began to evaporate org wide, not just engineering. It got to the point where engineering was down to three people-present company included-and a guy managing us who probably should have been let go long enough and neither myself or the other fellow could really stand to be around even socially-much less as a cohort and colleague (and to this day, the other guy and I strongly believe was the root cause of so many of our other engineers quitting once the former Director left, leaving jerk character as the most senior in the room by longevity alone).
        dbcurtis 8y ago
        > engineering douchebaggery is actually the biggest thing to hurt engineering since the dawn of time Quote from Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise on SXSW panel. https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/13/fetch-robotics-ceo-douchebaggery-is-ruining-engineering/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/13/fetch-robotics-ceo-douche... Melonee kicks ass.
- borplk 8y ago
  Companies aren't trying at all. Just go look at the job ads and see what pathetic items they list as "benefits". - natural sunlight - monthly social events - snacks - ping pong table All either basic workplace expectations or intangible irrelevant gimmicks. People are not that dumb. If you want to avoid paying people tangible benefits and what they are worth they will dump you and no amount of sunlight and social events and catered lunches is going to change it.
  - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
    > natural sunlight Is that a US thing? Never ever seen that in Germany, sounds like "free oxygen" too me.
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      There are regulations for that in Germany.
      - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
        Seems there is, there must be direct line of sight to the outside world: https://www.komnet.nrw.de/_sitetools/dialog/5278 https://www.komnet.nrw.de/_sitetools/dialog/5278 The more you know.
        tudelo 8y ago
        Wait, as in you can't be stuck in a cubicle farm without a view of a window?
    - borplk 8y ago
      US and many other countries. It's a sad brag that shows just how low the expectations have come down to.
    - vonmoltke 8y ago
      I have yet to see that listed in a job ad here. I ignore California openings, though, so maybe it's an SFBA thing.
- neilwilson 8y ago
  The market will sort it out. Those companies taking a 'doing you a favour' attitude will be competed out.
  - perfunctory 8y ago
    I wish this was the case.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    If it hasn't happened by now (this is not even remotely a new phenomenon), what makes you believe that it will happen ever?
keyle 8y ago
We often have positions open and our office is close to <redacted fortune 100 company>. So, every so often, we get a few applicants from there. Some of them are good, and we offer them a job; only to find out that they're not interested anymore. Usually something along the lines of "thanks for the offer, but I've been given bigger and better responsibilities and I'm not looking at leaving anymore", or "I've been assigned to a more exciting project, I will see how it goes", or "I've had a new position offered within the company so I will follow this lead for now". So, yeah... We're happy to help the other guys move up the ladder, really, been there myself; but it's a bit sad, that's what it takes to get promoted: another job offer and a resignation letter in hand.
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- mac01021 8y ago
  I try to put myself in the company's shoes: Employee: Please pay me more. Company: Why? Employee: If you don't then I will be able to find a more lucrative/satisfactory position elsewhere. At this point in the conversation, the company has only a couple of possible responses: 1. You're free to do so. I'm not increasing your pay. 2. Ok. I'll take your word for it. Here's a raise. 3. Prove it, and I'll give you a raise. #1 is the only option if the company is strapped for cash and the best option when the employee's net value is low. #2 can be a good choice if you have a very good sense of the job market and what makes a competitive compensation package OR if the employee's net value is high and an equally good substitute will be difficult to find. In all other situations, #3 does seem the most sensible and least risky. If a company is inclined to #2, they can and probably should award the raise preemptively, before it has been asked for. Now, as an employee, if I suppose the company has thought all of this through, and they haven't preempted me with an offer of a raise, then I can infer that #2 is not among the possibilities. So I probably don't even need to ask for a raise. I should probably just look for other jobs and then when I get an offer I can find out if the company is going to take option 1 or option 3. As a big company, such as a Fortune 500, often a manager will want badly to retain an employee and would happily go for #2, even preemptively. But if the senior management (who never even sees that employee) does not share the manager's assessment of the employee's value or the manager's familiarity with the job market for that role, then they will not allow it. I've seen all of these cases occur. Happily, my current employer is happy to pursue option #2 for high-performing employees.
tytytytytytytyt 8y ago
I saw a hiring manager in a debrief complain that a candidate was at his current job for too long, as if that indicated he could be that good.
qwer_qwer_008 8y ago
The fact that "job hopping" is usually used in the pejorative says a lot about the master / slave mentality that large (and small) companies have. Why would anyone have loyalty to a company that has no loyalty in return. This is especially true in the US with employment at will. It's less true in some countries but is usually legally enforced as opposed to cultural. My wife's career has been defined largely by strategic hops. Her reputation has been built up by doing good work -- her title and salary are almost entirely due to moving around when it was advantageous. A lot of companies are reluctant to promote internally due to office politics. In my wife's industry, it's nearly impossible to go from XXX to YYY at the same company. So, she joined a much smaller company that could only offer title advancement. Six months later she was back at a major player, with title YYY and the salary to match. (The CEO of that company called her a job hopper.) She did the same thing hopping out of the industry to take over a company as ZZZ. Now's she back in as an AAA, one position away from running the company (a top company in her industry). Her industry needs more YYY and AAA, but won't promote to create them. Catch-22 they only want to hire people who already have those titles. So, your choice is either grind with little or no real advancement or use companies and their current situation to your advantage. This is necessary and isn't just about your personal gain. My wife's career has helped a lot of her younger colleagues navigate their own. Employees owe companies nothing. Act accordingly.
- paulgb 8y ago
  > The fact that "job hopping" is usually used in the pejorative says a lot about the master / slave mentality that large (and small) companies have. Same with the word "poaching". Offering somebody a better job is not property theft.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I agree with what you've written, but I will say that as someone who's hired lots of folks, the time spent at each "hop" matters. That is, I want people who have dealt with a reasonable lifespan of a product and been responsible for multiple stages of growth. Thus, if you've had 5 different jobs in the past 5 years I would look at that as a real negative (one reason being that given how difficult hiring is I want to invest in someone who is going to stay longer than 6 months or a year). However, if you spent an average of at least maybe 2-3 years at different companies (and perhaps a much shorter term stint at one company for whatever reason), I wouldn't look at that negatively at all.
mac01021 8y ago
A few spots in this article make it sound like the normal practice is to quit your job before finding the next one. Is that something that a lot of job hoppers do?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I have done this once, when my employer at the time was mistreating me to such a degree that quitting immediately became very important. If your work situation is tolerable, you onbviously should not quit, as you lose a lot of negotiating power that way. That said, the only way to win a negotiation is to not want what the other party is offering. Even when job searching while unemployed, I just turned down places trying to pitch the standard cookie-cutter $150-160k job offers, religious micromanaging Agile crap, etc. Unless you need the job, you really should just say no to these things. It’s almost a civic virtue to help keep wages competitive with actual value add, help fight back against abjectly bad business trends like Agile or open-plan offices. At least require them to really pay you well if you are forced to deal with that nonsense.
  - throwaway713 8y ago
    > standard cookie-cutter $150-160k job offers Cookie-cutter offers?? Unless this is the Bay Area, I don't think there's such a thing as $160k jobs just floating around. The top 10 tech companies barely even offer that as base for a good software engineer (excludes stock & bonus). > religious micromanaging Agile crap Definitely agree with you there though
    - kelukelugames 8y ago
      With the exception of Amazon, I haven't received an offer with base pay lower than 150k in a long time. I'm a mid tier SWE at best. I think people are downvoting out of jealously.
      - rootsudo 8y ago
        And here I am thinking I'm good by declining 70-85k jobs and focusing on 100k+.
deepaksurti 8y ago
John Carmack: "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?.. https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?....
- lovich 8y ago
  Certainly, and if most jobs allowed me to ship products I'd like to stay and see them all the way through. A lot of jobs however, end up with the products being stuck in development hell as management keeps changing requirements while being too scared to test their assumptions in the market _and_ don't give raises. If I'm already going to be stuck building things that never release then I might as well get the most money that I can
  - bradfa 8y ago
    I've worked at 3 different companies over the past 13 years (1 large, 1 small, now 1 medium in size) and in all cases a full product development cycle is on the order of 1-3 years at all of them for both hardware and software. I've shipped tons of stuff. If you're finding "a lot of jobs" which don't involve actually shipping product to customers, maybe you're looking at the wrong kinds of companies or the wrong kind of industry?
    - SlightRespect 8y ago
      Some cities are dominated by insurance/banking/healthcare companies. Their IT needs are quite different than the consumer software space. It's more like a salesguy just landed a big fish and the big fish is making these demands to close the deal, so bolt on some new functionality to your existing platform. Ad nauseum.
    - lovich 8y ago
      You are correct, I am in the wrong shops. I am in enterprise shops mostly and the one shop where we were releasing something every week or two was a 5 man engineering team that was left alone by the main company until we started making good money, at which point the company started interfering and we stopped shipping. In the enterprise jobs I have more projects under my belt that were completed and never released versus released products. Every time it's been the result of either a low level executive losing a political battle and the project being shelved to rearrange resources or a company with little to no competition where executives didn't seem to care much about a million wasted here or there. One project I was on wasted over a million in development costs with the 5 product owners and me as the single dev because the executive who needed to sign off on the completed project didn't like the background color and insisted we started over at the requirements phase because "What else might we have gotten wrong?" Startups seem more fun/invigorating but the stability and pay haven't been there when I looked so I just stick at the enterprise jobs doing what I can and saving money aggressively to be financially independent and start working at jobs that I want to work out
timwaagh 8y ago
im quite glad to be paid on a less lowball level now. it made me stay with my current company. i never threatened to leave but i was going to.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Job hopping could be advantageous, if you happen to live in an area where there are plentiful jobs. If you live someplace where there are less opportunities, it's not so much of an option. (Besides moving.)
mratzloff 8y ago
As a hiring manager, the number of resumes that cross my desk that have 4 months here, 9 months here, 6 months here is absolutely astounding. These are full-time positions. It's especially true of front-end developers, but it applies across the board. I talked to one guy recently who said, "The first four months at my current job were really interesting and I learned a lot, but these last two months I've been kind of bored. That's why I'm looking." I don't hire them. If it's one or two jobs on a resume full of longer tenures, that's one thing. But if it's every job you've had since you graduated from coding bootcamp two years ago (three jobs later, now looking for the fourth), why invest in that person? Why bother? It's a vicious circle. In the short term you might earn more money from giant corporations who can absorb the churn and need a body on a project, but managers will calculate the ROI of investing in you as negative.
- chongli 8y ago
  I'm an undergrad at University of Waterloo and the co-op program here gives each student 5 work terms, 4 months each, spread out over a 5 year degree plan. I don't know much about co-op at other universities but I would imagine that this is a contributor to the phenomenon you're seeing. What do you think about that?
  - thedufer 8y ago
    Parent is specifically talking about full time positions. No one is concerned about short stints that are clearly internships. That's just how they work.
    - jcims 8y ago
      I think chongli is wondering if the job-hopping mindset is forged in an academic career in which you work for 4-5 different companies in a short amount of time.
  - ensignavenger 8y ago
    You might consider noting that on your resume by listing all the jobs under University Co-op/Internships or a similar heading.
whereismymoney 8y ago
My company boosted a teams pay by 31% the rest of the teams are getting fucked over.
perfunctory 8y ago
The more I think about IT industry the more I'm convinced that the majority of it is bullshit jobs [0]. Productivity, efficiency, job hopping, long term short term - it all almost doesn't matter. Giving raise or not is not about an individual's contribution to the bottom line. It's about social status, pecking order and winning an argument for its own sake. > "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." Sure there are places where it matters. But for majority of projects it doesn't. There are countless examples of (semi-)failed projects with massive budgets, and those budgets keep getting allocated regardless of any track record. So no wonder a lot of people in this industry get bored. Will frequent job hopping hurt their future career prospects as one of the comments suggests? Probably not. Why? Because it is important that software projects fail - [1] [0] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ [1] http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantThatSoftwareFails.html http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/I...
adamdrake 8y ago
Some thoughts on 'job hopping': 1. If you're in the first 10 years or so of your tech career, you should be changing jobs every 18 to 24 months. These are the primary years in which your salary goes up, and to stay in a role for a longer period of time without significant (e.g. 20%) raises could have a dramatic effect on your lifetime earnings. 2. NEVER discuss your current salary with a recruiter or potential employer. It's currently illegal in some jurisdictions to be asked about this, but overall it's still very common. See more details and negotiating strategies in an article I wrote on this topic: https://adamdrake.com/what-is-your-current-salary.html https://adamdrake.com/what-is-your-current-salary.html 3. Be prepared to transition into a role where you are responsible for people and output, to some extent. This makes you more valuable to companies because you are able to increase output from a group of people instead of from just yourself. Think of it like scaling your brain. The transition from Teammate to Team Lead can be difficult, and after advising multiple companies and teams on the topic I wrote up some of my thoughts: https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html 3a. As an extension of the above, make sure you're leading for the right reasons and that you're taking care of the team: https://adamdrake.com/leaders-eat-last.html https://adamdrake.com/leaders-eat-last.html 4. Maintain technical skills and make sure you're always delivering valuable technical results, or providing guidance to people so that they can do the same: https://adamdrake.com/always-be-shipping.html https://adamdrake.com/always-be-shipping.html. People and companies will almost always value you as a member of the organization based on what you've provided lately, so you have to keep producing. Once you've been hungry, you'll never feel full. Stay hungry. Lastly, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that this could be avoided if companies took care of people, gave raises preemptively and as close to market rates as possible, and gave people an opportunity to advance in an environment with a high degree of loyalty. Unfortunately, that's almost never the reality.
- thoughtpalette 8y ago
  Regarding #2, it gets harder to not disclose a range if you're on the higher end of the locations pay scale. I've been through a couple interviews attempting this strategy only to find out 5 rounds in they're offering a substantially lower salary than my current and it unfortunately was a waste of time for myself and the potential employer. You can definitely talk about your value but most of the time the company has a set budget for the position. /anecdotal
swyx 8y ago
whats the economic/theoretical consensus on optimal amount of frictional unemployment? (invert that and you approximate the amount of time the average worker should stay at a job). Say frictional unemp is 3% a month and so "Employee Lifetime Tenure" is 3 years. Given how inefficient the search process and job market is, shouldnt we encourage more searching especially at early phases of life? What is the theoretical upper limit to that? I wonder what research has been done to model this admittedly very theoretical question.
oldsklgdfth 8y ago
I think the way that job seekers/employers go about getting jobs/filling positions attributes to the huge turnover rate. It seems to me that in the past you had an "in" - someone that told you about the opportunity and primed you for the position. Also, they probably talked you up and set expectations when recommending you. Today, hiring is closer to tinder than a blind date. You send a resume, you talk to some people for a few hours and you are expected to make a decision based on that. There is little emphasis given to how good a fit will be. Personally, I have walked into interviews where they were so eager to give me an offer that they didn't even bother to give me details on the position and the environment. Getting a job and finding out that it's not what you expected 4 months in is disheartening. But employees and employers alike are guilty of not looking at this as a long-term investment.
cbm-vic-20 8y ago
I've been at the same company for 20 years, and when I read an article like this, I have to wonder if I've done my career harm. I've held many different positions at this company, and have survived the dot-com era and the recession. I'm more or less satisfied with the pay, but always have that nagging question if the grass is actually greener on the other side. All that may be moot, I'm now over the "tech Logan's Run" age of 40; will a recruiter simply assume I'm a dinosaur that hasn't learned anything in the past 20 years of delivering software and services?
geebee 8y ago
I'm interested in really understanding this phenomenon. The reason is that businesses seem to be acting irrationally. That may indeed be the case, but I have found that when you dig deeper, you often will discover at least some rationality to how firms behave in market environments. Here's what I find irrational: companies often wait until valuable employees generate an outside offer of employment before they hand over substantial wage and/or title increases. This process requires that an employee become dissatisfied enough to go through the process of interviewing, and in software development, that isn't necessarily trivial (it requires, in many cases, re-studying for a data structures and algorithms exam, often taken at a whiteboard in front of a group of people, which is quite stressful for many people). It sends your valuable employees out into the market where recruiters and hiring managers have a chance to pitch a job switch to them, potentially getting them excited about a new opportunity. And it forces the employee to put him or herself in a potentially vulnerable position with the original employer. I have read articles saying you should never take a counter-offer, because you be forever viewed as a flight risk. I think this is way too extreme, and that the process is understood and tolerated, but the effects of threatening to leave do sometimes persist in a more moderate form. I'm trying to think of the reasons for this custom, why it may not be as irrational as it seems. One possibility is that employers actually don't entirely know who their top performers are, at least in software development. They don't fully understand it, and they don't have numbers to point to like in sales. It could be that for some firms, generating an offer is the only way to a software developer can signal his or her value in a way that the employer can understand. Another factor, I think, is the difference in extroversion and comfort with negotiating between many software developers and managers/entrepreneurs. I do think that many people who hire software developers have trouble understanding the reluctance to negotiate. To them, negotiating or asking for something is such a normal, easy, run of the mill event, that they have trouble believing someone would go through dozens of hours of interview prep and days of white boarding exams rather than just saying "gimme". Lastly, this could be one of those downsides to a heuristic that is more optimal for other reasons. Perhaps there are enough people who just sorta don't look for new jobs, and can be paid less, that it's worth losing some of the workforce this way. Some of them will stay with counter offers, and if you follow this process, you may save more overall by not paying many developers actual market pay. This is more common than you'd think - many people in SF, for instance, who bought property a long time ago or who have very strong rent control locked in don't really think of maximizing their pay, and may not even really know what others are getting paid out there. Just for the record, though... I'm skeptical about the above argument. It seems like that would explain why businesses tolerate a little bit of job hopping, but not an epidemic. Anyone want to take a crack at it, come up with a reason why the current practices may be more rational than they seem? Not saying they are, just interested in what I may have overlooked.

140 points by uptown 8y ago

There are certainly many definitions of “winning”. I can only speak for myself: quitting my old job lowered my pay, but resulted in my being a lot happier and having more time to spend with my kids. If anything, the current trend and the number of people willing to jump jobs has helped people like myself take the leap into something new — something I might not have done without seeing others do.

jsgo 8y ago
That’s awesome. I enjoy working for the company I do now, but even with the previous one, only when the company started experiencing issues (like selling off contracts and about 75% of the employees) did I have the guts to move to something else as I wanted to remain in a “steady” job for my daughter. That is, probably would’ve loved to with the previous place, but didn’t have the confidence to.

exotree 8y ago

I am thrilled to hear this. If you can't hold on to your employees, pay them more, or give them working conditions like WFH or an easier commute, then you don't deserve to have them! That said, I sort of hate this headline. These people aren't quitters. They're ambitious, and they want more.

ravenstine 8y ago
It seems like these days people have to "move around to move up", or companies have a problem creating opportunities for advancement that don't involve promoting people to middle management, if one can even call that a promotion. Of course that's only one part of the bigger picture.
- iamdave 8y ago
  Is there a word or a phrase whereby the Peter Principle takes such a hold in the structure of management that it no longer becomes possible to even promote? The 'Peters' get to a position and create an artificial ceiling where potentially more capable would-be managers don't get promoted because their manager is a bit too dim to realize there are people languishing underneath them?
  - flukus 8y ago
    I think this would be territory covered by the dead sea effect: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d... IME this is in full swing at just about every company complaining about job hoppers.
    - iamdave 8y ago
      That may be the best description of the phenomenon I've described. I lived that. It was unbearable-stayed around way longer than I should have because I did genuinely and truly believe in the mission of the company. They gave us reason to and backed it up-but after a while, well yeah the water began to evaporate org wide, not just engineering. It got to the point where engineering was down to three people-present company included-and a guy managing us who probably should have been let go long enough and neither myself or the other fellow could really stand to be around even socially-much less as a cohort and colleague (and to this day, the other guy and I strongly believe was the root cause of so many of our other engineers quitting once the former Director left, leaving jerk character as the most senior in the room by longevity alone).
      - dbcurtis 8y ago
        > engineering douchebaggery is actually the biggest thing to hurt engineering since the dawn of time Quote from Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise on SXSW panel. https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/13/fetch-robotics-ceo-douchebaggery-is-ruining-engineering/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/13/fetch-robotics-ceo-douche... Melonee kicks ass.
borplk 8y ago
Companies aren't trying at all. Just go look at the job ads and see what pathetic items they list as "benefits". - natural sunlight - monthly social events - snacks - ping pong table All either basic workplace expectations or intangible irrelevant gimmicks. People are not that dumb. If you want to avoid paying people tangible benefits and what they are worth they will dump you and no amount of sunlight and social events and catered lunches is going to change it.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
  > natural sunlight Is that a US thing? Never ever seen that in Germany, sounds like "free oxygen" too me.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    There are regulations for that in Germany.
    - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
      Seems there is, there must be direct line of sight to the outside world: https://www.komnet.nrw.de/_sitetools/dialog/5278 https://www.komnet.nrw.de/_sitetools/dialog/5278 The more you know.
      - tudelo 8y ago
        Wait, as in you can't be stuck in a cubicle farm without a view of a window?
  - borplk 8y ago
    US and many other countries. It's a sad brag that shows just how low the expectations have come down to.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    I have yet to see that listed in a job ad here. I ignore California openings, though, so maybe it's an SFBA thing.
neilwilson 8y ago
The market will sort it out. Those companies taking a 'doing you a favour' attitude will be competed out.
- perfunctory 8y ago
  I wish this was the case.
- falcolas 8y ago
  If it hasn't happened by now (this is not even remotely a new phenomenon), what makes you believe that it will happen ever?

keyle 8y ago

We often have positions open and our office is close to <redacted fortune 100 company>. So, every so often, we get a few applicants from there. Some of them are good, and we offer them a job; only to find out that they're not interested anymore. Usually something along the lines of "thanks for the offer, but I've been given bigger and better responsibilities and I'm not looking at leaving anymore", or "I've been assigned to a more exciting project, I will see how it goes", or "I've had a new position offered within the company so I will follow this lead for now". So, yeah... We're happy to help the other guys move up the ladder, really, been there myself; but it's a bit sad, that's what it takes to get promoted: another job offer and a resignation letter in hand.

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mac01021 8y ago
I try to put myself in the company's shoes: Employee: Please pay me more. Company: Why? Employee: If you don't then I will be able to find a more lucrative/satisfactory position elsewhere. At this point in the conversation, the company has only a couple of possible responses: 1. You're free to do so. I'm not increasing your pay. 2. Ok. I'll take your word for it. Here's a raise. 3. Prove it, and I'll give you a raise. #1 is the only option if the company is strapped for cash and the best option when the employee's net value is low. #2 can be a good choice if you have a very good sense of the job market and what makes a competitive compensation package OR if the employee's net value is high and an equally good substitute will be difficult to find. In all other situations, #3 does seem the most sensible and least risky. If a company is inclined to #2, they can and probably should award the raise preemptively, before it has been asked for. Now, as an employee, if I suppose the company has thought all of this through, and they haven't preempted me with an offer of a raise, then I can infer that #2 is not among the possibilities. So I probably don't even need to ask for a raise. I should probably just look for other jobs and then when I get an offer I can find out if the company is going to take option 1 or option 3. As a big company, such as a Fortune 500, often a manager will want badly to retain an employee and would happily go for #2, even preemptively. But if the senior management (who never even sees that employee) does not share the manager's assessment of the employee's value or the manager's familiarity with the job market for that role, then they will not allow it. I've seen all of these cases occur. Happily, my current employer is happy to pursue option #2 for high-performing employees.

tytytytytytytyt 8y ago

I saw a hiring manager in a debrief complain that a candidate was at his current job for too long, as if that indicated he could be that good.

qwer_qwer_008 8y ago

The fact that "job hopping" is usually used in the pejorative says a lot about the master / slave mentality that large (and small) companies have. Why would anyone have loyalty to a company that has no loyalty in return. This is especially true in the US with employment at will. It's less true in some countries but is usually legally enforced as opposed to cultural. My wife's career has been defined largely by strategic hops. Her reputation has been built up by doing good work -- her title and salary are almost entirely due to moving around when it was advantageous. A lot of companies are reluctant to promote internally due to office politics. In my wife's industry, it's nearly impossible to go from XXX to YYY at the same company. So, she joined a much smaller company that could only offer title advancement. Six months later she was back at a major player, with title YYY and the salary to match. (The CEO of that company called her a job hopper.) She did the same thing hopping out of the industry to take over a company as ZZZ. Now's she back in as an AAA, one position away from running the company (a top company in her industry). Her industry needs more YYY and AAA, but won't promote to create them. Catch-22 they only want to hire people who already have those titles. So, your choice is either grind with little or no real advancement or use companies and their current situation to your advantage. This is necessary and isn't just about your personal gain. My wife's career has helped a lot of her younger colleagues navigate their own. Employees owe companies nothing. Act accordingly.

paulgb 8y ago
> The fact that "job hopping" is usually used in the pejorative says a lot about the master / slave mentality that large (and small) companies have. Same with the word "poaching". Offering somebody a better job is not property theft.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I agree with what you've written, but I will say that as someone who's hired lots of folks, the time spent at each "hop" matters. That is, I want people who have dealt with a reasonable lifespan of a product and been responsible for multiple stages of growth. Thus, if you've had 5 different jobs in the past 5 years I would look at that as a real negative (one reason being that given how difficult hiring is I want to invest in someone who is going to stay longer than 6 months or a year). However, if you spent an average of at least maybe 2-3 years at different companies (and perhaps a much shorter term stint at one company for whatever reason), I wouldn't look at that negatively at all.

mac01021 8y ago

A few spots in this article make it sound like the normal practice is to quit your job before finding the next one. Is that something that a lot of job hoppers do?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I have done this once, when my employer at the time was mistreating me to such a degree that quitting immediately became very important. If your work situation is tolerable, you onbviously should not quit, as you lose a lot of negotiating power that way. That said, the only way to win a negotiation is to not want what the other party is offering. Even when job searching while unemployed, I just turned down places trying to pitch the standard cookie-cutter $150-160k job offers, religious micromanaging Agile crap, etc. Unless you need the job, you really should just say no to these things. It’s almost a civic virtue to help keep wages competitive with actual value add, help fight back against abjectly bad business trends like Agile or open-plan offices. At least require them to really pay you well if you are forced to deal with that nonsense.
- throwaway713 8y ago
  > standard cookie-cutter $150-160k job offers Cookie-cutter offers?? Unless this is the Bay Area, I don't think there's such a thing as $160k jobs just floating around. The top 10 tech companies barely even offer that as base for a good software engineer (excludes stock & bonus). > religious micromanaging Agile crap Definitely agree with you there though
  - kelukelugames 8y ago
    With the exception of Amazon, I haven't received an offer with base pay lower than 150k in a long time. I'm a mid tier SWE at best. I think people are downvoting out of jealously.
    - rootsudo 8y ago
      And here I am thinking I'm good by declining 70-85k jobs and focusing on 100k+.

deepaksurti 8y ago

John Carmack: "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?.. https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?....

lovich 8y ago
Certainly, and if most jobs allowed me to ship products I'd like to stay and see them all the way through. A lot of jobs however, end up with the products being stuck in development hell as management keeps changing requirements while being too scared to test their assumptions in the market _and_ don't give raises. If I'm already going to be stuck building things that never release then I might as well get the most money that I can
- bradfa 8y ago
  I've worked at 3 different companies over the past 13 years (1 large, 1 small, now 1 medium in size) and in all cases a full product development cycle is on the order of 1-3 years at all of them for both hardware and software. I've shipped tons of stuff. If you're finding "a lot of jobs" which don't involve actually shipping product to customers, maybe you're looking at the wrong kinds of companies or the wrong kind of industry?
  - SlightRespect 8y ago
    Some cities are dominated by insurance/banking/healthcare companies. Their IT needs are quite different than the consumer software space. It's more like a salesguy just landed a big fish and the big fish is making these demands to close the deal, so bolt on some new functionality to your existing platform. Ad nauseum.
  - lovich 8y ago
    You are correct, I am in the wrong shops. I am in enterprise shops mostly and the one shop where we were releasing something every week or two was a 5 man engineering team that was left alone by the main company until we started making good money, at which point the company started interfering and we stopped shipping. In the enterprise jobs I have more projects under my belt that were completed and never released versus released products. Every time it's been the result of either a low level executive losing a political battle and the project being shelved to rearrange resources or a company with little to no competition where executives didn't seem to care much about a million wasted here or there. One project I was on wasted over a million in development costs with the 5 product owners and me as the single dev because the executive who needed to sign off on the completed project didn't like the background color and insisted we started over at the requirements phase because "What else might we have gotten wrong?" Startups seem more fun/invigorating but the stability and pay haven't been there when I looked so I just stick at the enterprise jobs doing what I can and saving money aggressively to be financially independent and start working at jobs that I want to work out

timwaagh 8y ago

im quite glad to be paid on a less lowball level now. it made me stay with my current company. i never threatened to leave but i was going to.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Job hopping could be advantageous, if you happen to live in an area where there are plentiful jobs. If you live someplace where there are less opportunities, it's not so much of an option. (Besides moving.)

mratzloff 8y ago

As a hiring manager, the number of resumes that cross my desk that have 4 months here, 9 months here, 6 months here is absolutely astounding. These are full-time positions. It's especially true of front-end developers, but it applies across the board. I talked to one guy recently who said, "The first four months at my current job were really interesting and I learned a lot, but these last two months I've been kind of bored. That's why I'm looking." I don't hire them. If it's one or two jobs on a resume full of longer tenures, that's one thing. But if it's every job you've had since you graduated from coding bootcamp two years ago (three jobs later, now looking for the fourth), why invest in that person? Why bother? It's a vicious circle. In the short term you might earn more money from giant corporations who can absorb the churn and need a body on a project, but managers will calculate the ROI of investing in you as negative.

chongli 8y ago
I'm an undergrad at University of Waterloo and the co-op program here gives each student 5 work terms, 4 months each, spread out over a 5 year degree plan. I don't know much about co-op at other universities but I would imagine that this is a contributor to the phenomenon you're seeing. What do you think about that?
- thedufer 8y ago
  Parent is specifically talking about full time positions. No one is concerned about short stints that are clearly internships. That's just how they work.
  - jcims 8y ago
    I think chongli is wondering if the job-hopping mindset is forged in an academic career in which you work for 4-5 different companies in a short amount of time.
- ensignavenger 8y ago
  You might consider noting that on your resume by listing all the jobs under University Co-op/Internships or a similar heading.

whereismymoney 8y ago

My company boosted a teams pay by 31% the rest of the teams are getting fucked over.

perfunctory 8y ago

The more I think about IT industry the more I'm convinced that the majority of it is bullshit jobs [0]. Productivity, efficiency, job hopping, long term short term - it all almost doesn't matter. Giving raise or not is not about an individual's contribution to the bottom line. It's about social status, pecking order and winning an argument for its own sake. > "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." Sure there are places where it matters. But for majority of projects it doesn't. There are countless examples of (semi-)failed projects with massive budgets, and those budgets keep getting allocated regardless of any track record. So no wonder a lot of people in this industry get bored. Will frequent job hopping hurt their future career prospects as one of the comments suggests? Probably not. Why? Because it is important that software projects fail - [1] [0] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ [1] http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantThatSoftwareFails.html http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/I...

adamdrake 8y ago

Some thoughts on 'job hopping': 1. If you're in the first 10 years or so of your tech career, you should be changing jobs every 18 to 24 months. These are the primary years in which your salary goes up, and to stay in a role for a longer period of time without significant (e.g. 20%) raises could have a dramatic effect on your lifetime earnings. 2. NEVER discuss your current salary with a recruiter or potential employer. It's currently illegal in some jurisdictions to be asked about this, but overall it's still very common. See more details and negotiating strategies in an article I wrote on this topic: https://adamdrake.com/what-is-your-current-salary.html https://adamdrake.com/what-is-your-current-salary.html 3. Be prepared to transition into a role where you are responsible for people and output, to some extent. This makes you more valuable to companies because you are able to increase output from a group of people instead of from just yourself. Think of it like scaling your brain. The transition from Teammate to Team Lead can be difficult, and after advising multiple companies and teams on the topic I wrote up some of my thoughts: https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html https://adamdrake.com/teammate-to-team-lead.html 3a. As an extension of the above, make sure you're leading for the right reasons and that you're taking care of the team: https://adamdrake.com/leaders-eat-last.html https://adamdrake.com/leaders-eat-last.html 4. Maintain technical skills and make sure you're always delivering valuable technical results, or providing guidance to people so that they can do the same: https://adamdrake.com/always-be-shipping.html https://adamdrake.com/always-be-shipping.html. People and companies will almost always value you as a member of the organization based on what you've provided lately, so you have to keep producing. Once you've been hungry, you'll never feel full. Stay hungry. Lastly, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that this could be avoided if companies took care of people, gave raises preemptively and as close to market rates as possible, and gave people an opportunity to advance in an environment with a high degree of loyalty. Unfortunately, that's almost never the reality.

thoughtpalette 8y ago
Regarding #2, it gets harder to not disclose a range if you're on the higher end of the locations pay scale. I've been through a couple interviews attempting this strategy only to find out 5 rounds in they're offering a substantially lower salary than my current and it unfortunately was a waste of time for myself and the potential employer. You can definitely talk about your value but most of the time the company has a set budget for the position. /anecdotal

swyx 8y ago

whats the economic/theoretical consensus on optimal amount of frictional unemployment? (invert that and you approximate the amount of time the average worker should stay at a job). Say frictional unemp is 3% a month and so "Employee Lifetime Tenure" is 3 years. Given how inefficient the search process and job market is, shouldnt we encourage more searching especially at early phases of life? What is the theoretical upper limit to that? I wonder what research has been done to model this admittedly very theoretical question.

oldsklgdfth 8y ago

I think the way that job seekers/employers go about getting jobs/filling positions attributes to the huge turnover rate. It seems to me that in the past you had an "in" - someone that told you about the opportunity and primed you for the position. Also, they probably talked you up and set expectations when recommending you. Today, hiring is closer to tinder than a blind date. You send a resume, you talk to some people for a few hours and you are expected to make a decision based on that. There is little emphasis given to how good a fit will be. Personally, I have walked into interviews where they were so eager to give me an offer that they didn't even bother to give me details on the position and the environment. Getting a job and finding out that it's not what you expected 4 months in is disheartening. But employees and employers alike are guilty of not looking at this as a long-term investment.

cbm-vic-20 8y ago

I've been at the same company for 20 years, and when I read an article like this, I have to wonder if I've done my career harm. I've held many different positions at this company, and have survived the dot-com era and the recession. I'm more or less satisfied with the pay, but always have that nagging question if the grass is actually greener on the other side. All that may be moot, I'm now over the "tech Logan's Run" age of 40; will a recruiter simply assume I'm a dinosaur that hasn't learned anything in the past 20 years of delivering software and services?

geebee 8y ago

I'm interested in really understanding this phenomenon. The reason is that businesses seem to be acting irrationally. That may indeed be the case, but I have found that when you dig deeper, you often will discover at least some rationality to how firms behave in market environments. Here's what I find irrational: companies often wait until valuable employees generate an outside offer of employment before they hand over substantial wage and/or title increases. This process requires that an employee become dissatisfied enough to go through the process of interviewing, and in software development, that isn't necessarily trivial (it requires, in many cases, re-studying for a data structures and algorithms exam, often taken at a whiteboard in front of a group of people, which is quite stressful for many people). It sends your valuable employees out into the market where recruiters and hiring managers have a chance to pitch a job switch to them, potentially getting them excited about a new opportunity. And it forces the employee to put him or herself in a potentially vulnerable position with the original employer. I have read articles saying you should never take a counter-offer, because you be forever viewed as a flight risk. I think this is way too extreme, and that the process is understood and tolerated, but the effects of threatening to leave do sometimes persist in a more moderate form. I'm trying to think of the reasons for this custom, why it may not be as irrational as it seems. One possibility is that employers actually don't entirely know who their top performers are, at least in software development. They don't fully understand it, and they don't have numbers to point to like in sales. It could be that for some firms, generating an offer is the only way to a software developer can signal his or her value in a way that the employer can understand. Another factor, I think, is the difference in extroversion and comfort with negotiating between many software developers and managers/entrepreneurs. I do think that many people who hire software developers have trouble understanding the reluctance to negotiate. To them, negotiating or asking for something is such a normal, easy, run of the mill event, that they have trouble believing someone would go through dozens of hours of interview prep and days of white boarding exams rather than just saying "gimme". Lastly, this could be one of those downsides to a heuristic that is more optimal for other reasons. Perhaps there are enough people who just sorta don't look for new jobs, and can be paid less, that it's worth losing some of the workforce this way. Some of them will stay with counter offers, and if you follow this process, you may save more overall by not paying many developers actual market pay. This is more common than you'd think - many people in SF, for instance, who bought property a long time ago or who have very strong rent control locked in don't really think of maximizing their pay, and may not even really know what others are getting paid out there. Just for the record, though... I'm skeptical about the above argument. It seems like that would explain why businesses tolerate a little bit of job hopping, but not an epidemic. Anyone want to take a crack at it, come up with a reason why the current practices may be more rational than they seem? Not saying they are, just interested in what I may have overlooked.