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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-tim

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.
- jcims 8y ago
  Do you have the option to re-up at the same firm each time? I'm just observing from an ex-boyfriend of my kiddo (so no questions haha), but University of Cincinnati's engineering program alternates co-op and academics every semester. So you're looking at 6-8 work terms of 3 months each by the time you graduate. However, as far as I can tell most interns re-up to the same company. He's been at the same one since the beginning. It's a great program.
- kabdib 8y ago
  For an intern, I think that doing several different things is a positive sign. However, I expect professionals to stay at companies long enough to accomplish "interesting" things. A series of unrelated 3-4 month projects does not give me confidence, and indeed, sends a message about lack of focus and resolve.
- ssully 8y ago
  If you are putting each individual work term as an item, make sure to note the co-op program. I did something similar and it was never seen as a negative.
neilwilson 8y ago
If you can hire those you need in the current market good luck to you, but at the moment there are more people wanting to hire than those available. Which means the worker is hiring the company, not the other way around. And that's how it should be overall to drive forward wages and productivity.
FLUX-YOU 8y ago
>why invest in that person? Why bother? Tech firms below the top do relatively little investing TBH. Things you pay to bring anyone on board are not really investments. But also, it's possible they have no kids/dependents and are playing as a free agent. That doesn't mean they'll be able to deliver value for someone out there, and they likely had no way of knowing you were looking for longer term candidates before applying.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  I can the frustrations from a hiring mangers point of view. It does take resources (mostly time) to interview, offer, on-board, and integrate a new team member. However, companies expect and want loyalty from their employees and offer next to nothing in terms of retention. If companies wish to get a better ROI on their hiring decisions they need to begin offering market-competitive raises. A 5% CoL adjustment is borderline insulting. Why would an employee choose to stay when all it takes is a few interviews to make a 15-20% pay jump? I can't imagine that having to hire a new bunch of people every few months to replace the job-hoppers is a better investment than offering a realistic raise.
  - softawre 8y ago
    5% CoL is insulting when CoL goes up less than that? Maybe what you mean is that raises when you are promoted are not high enough? During your first 5 years or so you'll probably get good raises as you gain experience and increase the value you provide to the organization. Past that, unless you're top 5% and negotiate well, you'll probably stagnate a bit in the pay department (stagnate at a very good wage, that is). In my experience, at least..
    - protonimitate 8y ago
      5% raises are insulting when a company bemoans the hardships of not being able to retain talent. I get stagnating in pay raises after 2-3 years and receiving decent increases up to that point, but how can a company complain about retaining talent when they don't offer anything past the 5% in the first place? It just seems strange to me that companies want the option to fire off employees at will, but also hate seeing employees take advantage of that ('job hop'). Maybe a 2 year contract with built in raise structure (assuming improvement based on pre-defined metrics) would be a better solution than at will employment. Whatever the solution may be, it doesn't seem like many people are satisfied with the current system. Especially from a hiring management perspective.
jdhn 8y ago
>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. So my last full-time (i.e. non-contractor status) job was for a startup that nearly failed. I was let go in the final round of layoffs, and I was only there for 9 months. I feel that a resume isn't really a good place to say "Oh yeah, my time here was short because I got laid off due to downsizing". Apart from actually talking to you about the situation, how can I explain myself? Also, how would you feel about a resume where someone has had multiple 6-9 month jobs, but they were there as a contractor?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 8y ago
  Especially with tech startups, short job stints are IMO looked at as more common practice for a variety of reasons. Most people also understand that there sometimes just wasn’t a meeting of the minds or whatever when hiring on someplace—or the situation changes between hiring and starting.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I think as long as it's 1 or 2 short tenures, you're OK. He's (I assume) talking about 5 or 6 in a row. I also did a stint as a contractor/consultant - I list that as a single job on my resume, since I did get paid by a single employer during that time. Of course, my job title for that period is "consultant".
- sempron64 8y ago
  Not the parent, but contract work should be it's own self-employed section. It's understood that contractors are usually hired for a single relatively short project, and an ability to get these consecutively and complete them in the alotted time is a positive indicator, not a negative one.
- gaius 8y ago
  There’s no stigma in being laid off, it’s a failure of management when a company has over-hired, not of the Worker.
lostmsu 8y ago
How many products have development cycles longer, than a year in the same mode? While I was working in Microsoft, management switched people between projects in 1-1.5 years due to some "reorganization". And that was a large product. It would happen much more often, if they'd follow agile.
hanniabu 8y ago
From my experience, most of the time opening have been filled externally rather than promote. Therefore it's easier to move up by changing companies. A point another commenter brought up is you never head a company say the following: "The market is competitive and your market rate has increased, so here's a raise (of more than 2-3%)" This leads to job hopping as well in order to get pay increases. The reason why it's especially present in applicants that recently graduated from college or a bootcamp is that their inexperience is often taken advantage of and are underpaid for lack of experience that they will likely gain in the first few months.
- tdumitrescu 8y ago
  > you never head a company say the following: "The market is competitive and your market rate has increased, so here's a raise (of more than 2-3%)" That has absolutely happened to me at the company I'm with. And yes, the proactive stance of eng management around keeping up with the market is one of the factors that's kept me happy there for over 4 years now.
  - softawre 8y ago
    Amazing that 4 years at one place is A Long Time now. I've also seem this sort of market matching stuff at my BigCorp in the Midwest, I've been at my company 10+ years now, and would need to take a paycut to leave basically anywhere close to local.
  - platoscubicle 8y ago
    This also happened to me at my current employer. In fact every year they review all employees salaries compared to the market rate and compensate for any difference with a raise. This was in addition to the yearly raise based on a performance review. I think companies serious about retaining talent are starting to employ this practice.
    - glitcher 8y ago
      Curious, do you know what data is used in order to estimate the current market rate for a given position? As an individual employee I am very interested in figuring this out for my local region, but I really don't know what data sources are accurate.
cableshaft 8y ago
I have a long string of <2 year jobs on my resume. 1st was a startup that failed after a year a half after several products we made didn't make back the money the company invested into them. 2nd was a year working for the university while I went back to school and finished up my degree (I literally couldn't keep working there after I graduated). 3rd was a year long at another startup that failed after we put out a few apps that couldn't steal attention away from other apps. 4th was a year and a half at a small company that was growing really well and then proceeded to have its worst year ever (lost most of its clients, including its cash cow) and ended up laying off almost everyone. 5th was a contract job where the manager decided to outsource our development after the lead developer quit (there was only three of us in the department) and they terminated my contract as a result, after just 8 months. The 6th is where I'm currently at, and it's another job where they were doing really well, got purchased by a large corporation, and then the corporation started slashing and burning to save money. I've somehow survived here for 3 years, survived multiple layoffs, and we're down to just a handful of developers (and losing our office here in a few weeks, yay), and part of the reason why I've stayed is I know the last 5 jobs look bad to people who look at resumes, even though I was laid off or terminated from each one after the company or department fell apart, and I apparently just keep picking companies just before they fall on tough times. Meanwhile I've had to endure them getting rid of bonuses, freezes on raises, multiple reductions in benefits, etc. at this current job as I wait for a good time to jump ship for greener pastures. Just so I have one stable looking job on my resume. It can be difficult sometimes to stay with companies even when you try to. I have a bad habit of wanting to stay until a project is completed and out the door, but that's also when they're most likely to make layoffs.
- kevstev 8y ago
  I have been a hiring manager for 5+ years now. While this isn't great, as long as you emphasize that your first two were while you were still in school and more or less all of them were at startups, this doesn't look terrible. You rolled the dice, it didn't work out. It also sounds like you were a contractor at one of these places as well, just make sure you emphasize that. The bigger question in my mind is why you got into so many situations with failing startups- were they doomed to fail and you just didn't have the business sense to see that? In either case, it sounds like you are still only a few years out from graduating, you get a lot of slack for inexperience in my eyes. Of course I can't speak for everyone, some guy that has been at MegaCorp for 17 years since he stepped out of school may not be as kind, but you probably don't want to work for him anyway. Regardless though, your latest tenure is 3 years. The trend is in the right direction. If your current situation is bad, now is almost certainly the right time to make a jump- I can tell you first hand, the quality of people we are seeing right now is substandard, if you know what you are doing, you will stand out. This is a great time to be picky not only about the role you accept, but the company as well- an established business that you know will be around in 3-5 years and hopefully thriving is particularly important. Also consider that we are definitely at the top of an economic cycle, the next recession is on the horizon and the weaker companies will feel the pain.
JTbane 8y ago
Maybe people would not leave these positions if you gave them a promotion of more than 2-3% from time to time.
- mratzloff 8y ago
  You have no knowledge about me or my compensation practices.
noxxten 8y ago
It's unfortunate that so many recruiters have this mindset. Instead of judging based on the time spent at places, ask why they're bored and what they would enjoy working on. If that lines up with your opening, then great. If not, then move on. See if they have and side projects or even work examples that they're passionate about... But by all means, don't judge based on something that is often times out of their control entirely. I've been working in front-end development for the last decade, half of that freelance. I took my first full-time job in 2014. It was a contract-to-hire setup with an agency in DC. After working on contract for 4 months, they gave me an offer of $30k... For Washington DC. Needless to say, I politely declined, but that meant moving back to my home state in KY where tech jobs aren't a dime a dozen. After a 3 month gap, I landed a job with an agency that specialized in building and maintaining hospital and healthcare network websites. I was required to move to a nearby city for it, in Louisville KY. - The job lasted barely 6 months before the company closed the satellite office. I was told I could move across the country, or I would be let go. Because of my work history, I couldn't draw unemployment and my savings were pretty slim after the past year of running around all over the place. I took the first job I could land, at an autodesk reseller company. Three months after starting, there was a reorganization with my direct manager getting the boot, and someone with a "fine arts degree" replacing her... My new manager had no experience managing teams, no web experience at all, and she was running the entire marketing department. Needless to say, after a total of a year there the entire marketing department (5 people at that point), was shuttered. The CEO/HR tried to squirm out of it by firing everyone for "lack of performance", but thankfully most of us had proof that our jobs far exceeded the descriptions we signed up for and expectations were absolutely unreachable. I drew unemployment for the FULL 6 months following that, casually and carefully looking for my next job. I landed a role as a front-end designer at an elearning company and as of now I've been here a little over a year. That said, 6 months ago we went through a reorganization and more than a dozen of the staff were let go (out of 100 or so). Moral of the story is, sometimes saying "I'm looking for exciting new projects and to learn new things!" sounds a hell of a lot better on a resume when compared to "my last company reorganized and no longer needed me, the one before that shuttered their marketing department, the one before that closed their local office entirely, and the one before that couldn't afford to offer a living wage in one of the most densely populated US cities..."
da02 8y ago
Area there any programs (bootcamps, schools, etc.) you recommend? Or do you prefer college degrees?
- mratzloff 8y ago
  I give some weight to a CS degree from a top engineering school, but beyond that I haven't observed a correlation between education and capability. I give a lot of weight to intellectual curiosity and self-directed initiative, as those are the clearest signals (along with empathy) of being a good engineer.
SatvikBeri 8y ago
In the Bay Area market rates (and cost of living) were rising at 10%+ per year for several years. Add an adjustment for experience, and the average raise for new employees should have been 20% or so to be market-competitive. But almost no companies did this, hence tons of job hopping.
Kalium 8y ago
> 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? Because I'm looking for a place that actually believes in earning the loyalty of employees and investing in their satisfaction. An employer who looks for the upside before investing transactionally has already gone badly wrong.
blablabla123 8y ago
> It's especially true of front-end developers, but it applies across the board. In my experience front-end is an extremely weird field: "classical techies" consider it stupid, management is addicted to it and the field is very fast paced. Also I find it quite unthankful. The companies could do a lot to make it more attractive to developers. Having worked for 3-4 years a lot of front-end stuff, one job was indeed only 3 months and cut-throat toxic, I don't want to do it ever again. Even though I'm really good at it. And my opinion gets confirmed continuously, at our company for instance most pressure is on the front-enders. Why? Because that's the only thing management understands or at least they think they do. On the other hand once you touched front-end it's very tough to get more technical tasks.
naveen99 8y ago
You are only doing yourself as a disservice by holding this against them if they are otherwise acceptable. They probably will just stay in their current position if they don’t get hired. A year later they probably are worse for having failed their other jump attempts, but a year later you won’t hold a quick jump against them, and hire a dud. Ignore their jump history, hire if they are good, retain them by paying market rate in the future.
thermodynthrway 8y ago
I've switched jobs every year and almost tripled my pay in 5 years. It's stupid to not job hop, I'm making more than twice what my friends do that have stayed put. In my experience, companies with a ton of job hoppers have better engineers too. The people that hop a lot tend to be more outgoing and amenable to taking risks. Job hopping is only lucrative because companies take advantage of inexperienced devs and never give raises.
- bitcoinmoney 8y ago
  What’s the breakdown of your current TC? And also when you started? I got 40% increase by job hopping in 3 years.
  - thermodynthrway 8y ago
    I make about 110k in an area with a market average of 90. I started my career at 40k around 4 years ago. Over 30% pay bump each time. Obivously, you hit dimishing returns over time, but job hopping early career has boosted my lifetime income significantly

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.
jcims 8y ago
Do you have the option to re-up at the same firm each time? I'm just observing from an ex-boyfriend of my kiddo (so no questions haha), but University of Cincinnati's engineering program alternates co-op and academics every semester. So you're looking at 6-8 work terms of 3 months each by the time you graduate. However, as far as I can tell most interns re-up to the same company. He's been at the same one since the beginning. It's a great program.
kabdib 8y ago
For an intern, I think that doing several different things is a positive sign. However, I expect professionals to stay at companies long enough to accomplish "interesting" things. A series of unrelated 3-4 month projects does not give me confidence, and indeed, sends a message about lack of focus and resolve.
ssully 8y ago
If you are putting each individual work term as an item, make sure to note the co-op program. I did something similar and it was never seen as a negative.

neilwilson 8y ago

If you can hire those you need in the current market good luck to you, but at the moment there are more people wanting to hire than those available. Which means the worker is hiring the company, not the other way around. And that's how it should be overall to drive forward wages and productivity.

FLUX-YOU 8y ago

>why invest in that person? Why bother? Tech firms below the top do relatively little investing TBH. Things you pay to bring anyone on board are not really investments. But also, it's possible they have no kids/dependents and are playing as a free agent. That doesn't mean they'll be able to deliver value for someone out there, and they likely had no way of knowing you were looking for longer term candidates before applying.

protonimitate 8y ago
I can the frustrations from a hiring mangers point of view. It does take resources (mostly time) to interview, offer, on-board, and integrate a new team member. However, companies expect and want loyalty from their employees and offer next to nothing in terms of retention. If companies wish to get a better ROI on their hiring decisions they need to begin offering market-competitive raises. A 5% CoL adjustment is borderline insulting. Why would an employee choose to stay when all it takes is a few interviews to make a 15-20% pay jump? I can't imagine that having to hire a new bunch of people every few months to replace the job-hoppers is a better investment than offering a realistic raise.
- softawre 8y ago
  5% CoL is insulting when CoL goes up less than that? Maybe what you mean is that raises when you are promoted are not high enough? During your first 5 years or so you'll probably get good raises as you gain experience and increase the value you provide to the organization. Past that, unless you're top 5% and negotiate well, you'll probably stagnate a bit in the pay department (stagnate at a very good wage, that is). In my experience, at least..
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    5% raises are insulting when a company bemoans the hardships of not being able to retain talent. I get stagnating in pay raises after 2-3 years and receiving decent increases up to that point, but how can a company complain about retaining talent when they don't offer anything past the 5% in the first place? It just seems strange to me that companies want the option to fire off employees at will, but also hate seeing employees take advantage of that ('job hop'). Maybe a 2 year contract with built in raise structure (assuming improvement based on pre-defined metrics) would be a better solution than at will employment. Whatever the solution may be, it doesn't seem like many people are satisfied with the current system. Especially from a hiring management perspective.

jdhn 8y ago

>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. So my last full-time (i.e. non-contractor status) job was for a startup that nearly failed. I was let go in the final round of layoffs, and I was only there for 9 months. I feel that a resume isn't really a good place to say "Oh yeah, my time here was short because I got laid off due to downsizing". Apart from actually talking to you about the situation, how can I explain myself? Also, how would you feel about a resume where someone has had multiple 6-9 month jobs, but they were there as a contractor?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 8y ago
Especially with tech startups, short job stints are IMO looked at as more common practice for a variety of reasons. Most people also understand that there sometimes just wasn’t a meeting of the minds or whatever when hiring on someplace—or the situation changes between hiring and starting.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I think as long as it's 1 or 2 short tenures, you're OK. He's (I assume) talking about 5 or 6 in a row. I also did a stint as a contractor/consultant - I list that as a single job on my resume, since I did get paid by a single employer during that time. Of course, my job title for that period is "consultant".
sempron64 8y ago
Not the parent, but contract work should be it's own self-employed section. It's understood that contractors are usually hired for a single relatively short project, and an ability to get these consecutively and complete them in the alotted time is a positive indicator, not a negative one.
gaius 8y ago
There’s no stigma in being laid off, it’s a failure of management when a company has over-hired, not of the Worker.

lostmsu 8y ago

How many products have development cycles longer, than a year in the same mode? While I was working in Microsoft, management switched people between projects in 1-1.5 years due to some "reorganization". And that was a large product. It would happen much more often, if they'd follow agile.

hanniabu 8y ago

From my experience, most of the time opening have been filled externally rather than promote. Therefore it's easier to move up by changing companies. A point another commenter brought up is you never head a company say the following: "The market is competitive and your market rate has increased, so here's a raise (of more than 2-3%)" This leads to job hopping as well in order to get pay increases. The reason why it's especially present in applicants that recently graduated from college or a bootcamp is that their inexperience is often taken advantage of and are underpaid for lack of experience that they will likely gain in the first few months.

tdumitrescu 8y ago
> you never head a company say the following: "The market is competitive and your market rate has increased, so here's a raise (of more than 2-3%)" That has absolutely happened to me at the company I'm with. And yes, the proactive stance of eng management around keeping up with the market is one of the factors that's kept me happy there for over 4 years now.
- softawre 8y ago
  Amazing that 4 years at one place is A Long Time now. I've also seem this sort of market matching stuff at my BigCorp in the Midwest, I've been at my company 10+ years now, and would need to take a paycut to leave basically anywhere close to local.
- platoscubicle 8y ago
  This also happened to me at my current employer. In fact every year they review all employees salaries compared to the market rate and compensate for any difference with a raise. This was in addition to the yearly raise based on a performance review. I think companies serious about retaining talent are starting to employ this practice.
  - glitcher 8y ago
    Curious, do you know what data is used in order to estimate the current market rate for a given position? As an individual employee I am very interested in figuring this out for my local region, but I really don't know what data sources are accurate.

cableshaft 8y ago

I have a long string of <2 year jobs on my resume. 1st was a startup that failed after a year a half after several products we made didn't make back the money the company invested into them. 2nd was a year working for the university while I went back to school and finished up my degree (I literally couldn't keep working there after I graduated). 3rd was a year long at another startup that failed after we put out a few apps that couldn't steal attention away from other apps. 4th was a year and a half at a small company that was growing really well and then proceeded to have its worst year ever (lost most of its clients, including its cash cow) and ended up laying off almost everyone. 5th was a contract job where the manager decided to outsource our development after the lead developer quit (there was only three of us in the department) and they terminated my contract as a result, after just 8 months. The 6th is where I'm currently at, and it's another job where they were doing really well, got purchased by a large corporation, and then the corporation started slashing and burning to save money. I've somehow survived here for 3 years, survived multiple layoffs, and we're down to just a handful of developers (and losing our office here in a few weeks, yay), and part of the reason why I've stayed is I know the last 5 jobs look bad to people who look at resumes, even though I was laid off or terminated from each one after the company or department fell apart, and I apparently just keep picking companies just before they fall on tough times. Meanwhile I've had to endure them getting rid of bonuses, freezes on raises, multiple reductions in benefits, etc. at this current job as I wait for a good time to jump ship for greener pastures. Just so I have one stable looking job on my resume. It can be difficult sometimes to stay with companies even when you try to. I have a bad habit of wanting to stay until a project is completed and out the door, but that's also when they're most likely to make layoffs.

kevstev 8y ago
I have been a hiring manager for 5+ years now. While this isn't great, as long as you emphasize that your first two were while you were still in school and more or less all of them were at startups, this doesn't look terrible. You rolled the dice, it didn't work out. It also sounds like you were a contractor at one of these places as well, just make sure you emphasize that. The bigger question in my mind is why you got into so many situations with failing startups- were they doomed to fail and you just didn't have the business sense to see that? In either case, it sounds like you are still only a few years out from graduating, you get a lot of slack for inexperience in my eyes. Of course I can't speak for everyone, some guy that has been at MegaCorp for 17 years since he stepped out of school may not be as kind, but you probably don't want to work for him anyway. Regardless though, your latest tenure is 3 years. The trend is in the right direction. If your current situation is bad, now is almost certainly the right time to make a jump- I can tell you first hand, the quality of people we are seeing right now is substandard, if you know what you are doing, you will stand out. This is a great time to be picky not only about the role you accept, but the company as well- an established business that you know will be around in 3-5 years and hopefully thriving is particularly important. Also consider that we are definitely at the top of an economic cycle, the next recession is on the horizon and the weaker companies will feel the pain.

JTbane 8y ago

Maybe people would not leave these positions if you gave them a promotion of more than 2-3% from time to time.

mratzloff 8y ago
You have no knowledge about me or my compensation practices.

noxxten 8y ago

It's unfortunate that so many recruiters have this mindset. Instead of judging based on the time spent at places, ask why they're bored and what they would enjoy working on. If that lines up with your opening, then great. If not, then move on. See if they have and side projects or even work examples that they're passionate about... But by all means, don't judge based on something that is often times out of their control entirely. I've been working in front-end development for the last decade, half of that freelance. I took my first full-time job in 2014. It was a contract-to-hire setup with an agency in DC. After working on contract for 4 months, they gave me an offer of $30k... For Washington DC. Needless to say, I politely declined, but that meant moving back to my home state in KY where tech jobs aren't a dime a dozen. After a 3 month gap, I landed a job with an agency that specialized in building and maintaining hospital and healthcare network websites. I was required to move to a nearby city for it, in Louisville KY. - The job lasted barely 6 months before the company closed the satellite office. I was told I could move across the country, or I would be let go. Because of my work history, I couldn't draw unemployment and my savings were pretty slim after the past year of running around all over the place. I took the first job I could land, at an autodesk reseller company. Three months after starting, there was a reorganization with my direct manager getting the boot, and someone with a "fine arts degree" replacing her... My new manager had no experience managing teams, no web experience at all, and she was running the entire marketing department. Needless to say, after a total of a year there the entire marketing department (5 people at that point), was shuttered. The CEO/HR tried to squirm out of it by firing everyone for "lack of performance", but thankfully most of us had proof that our jobs far exceeded the descriptions we signed up for and expectations were absolutely unreachable. I drew unemployment for the FULL 6 months following that, casually and carefully looking for my next job. I landed a role as a front-end designer at an elearning company and as of now I've been here a little over a year. That said, 6 months ago we went through a reorganization and more than a dozen of the staff were let go (out of 100 or so). Moral of the story is, sometimes saying "I'm looking for exciting new projects and to learn new things!" sounds a hell of a lot better on a resume when compared to "my last company reorganized and no longer needed me, the one before that shuttered their marketing department, the one before that closed their local office entirely, and the one before that couldn't afford to offer a living wage in one of the most densely populated US cities..."

da02 8y ago

Area there any programs (bootcamps, schools, etc.) you recommend? Or do you prefer college degrees?

mratzloff 8y ago
I give some weight to a CS degree from a top engineering school, but beyond that I haven't observed a correlation between education and capability. I give a lot of weight to intellectual curiosity and self-directed initiative, as those are the clearest signals (along with empathy) of being a good engineer.

SatvikBeri 8y ago

In the Bay Area market rates (and cost of living) were rising at 10%+ per year for several years. Add an adjustment for experience, and the average raise for new employees should have been 20% or so to be market-competitive. But almost no companies did this, hence tons of job hopping.

Kalium 8y ago

> 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? Because I'm looking for a place that actually believes in earning the loyalty of employees and investing in their satisfaction. An employer who looks for the upside before investing transactionally has already gone badly wrong.

blablabla123 8y ago

> It's especially true of front-end developers, but it applies across the board. In my experience front-end is an extremely weird field: "classical techies" consider it stupid, management is addicted to it and the field is very fast paced. Also I find it quite unthankful. The companies could do a lot to make it more attractive to developers. Having worked for 3-4 years a lot of front-end stuff, one job was indeed only 3 months and cut-throat toxic, I don't want to do it ever again. Even though I'm really good at it. And my opinion gets confirmed continuously, at our company for instance most pressure is on the front-enders. Why? Because that's the only thing management understands or at least they think they do. On the other hand once you touched front-end it's very tough to get more technical tasks.

naveen99 8y ago

You are only doing yourself as a disservice by holding this against them if they are otherwise acceptable. They probably will just stay in their current position if they don’t get hired. A year later they probably are worse for having failed their other jump attempts, but a year later you won’t hold a quick jump against them, and hire a dud. Ignore their jump history, hire if they are good, retain them by paying market rate in the future.

thermodynthrway 8y ago

I've switched jobs every year and almost tripled my pay in 5 years. It's stupid to not job hop, I'm making more than twice what my friends do that have stayed put. In my experience, companies with a ton of job hoppers have better engineers too. The people that hop a lot tend to be more outgoing and amenable to taking risks. Job hopping is only lucrative because companies take advantage of inexperienced devs and never give raises.

bitcoinmoney 8y ago
What’s the breakdown of your current TC? And also when you started? I got 40% increase by job hopping in 3 years.
- thermodynthrway 8y ago
  I make about 110k in an area with a market average of 90. I started my career at 40k around 4 years ago. Over 30% pay bump each time. Obivously, you hit dimishing returns over time, but job hopping early career has boosted my lifetime income significantly