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Counterpoint: I consistently leave jobs too early when I could have instead stuck around and made larger impacts during restructurings or just sat around and do

Counterpoint: I consistently leave jobs too early when I could have instead stuck around and made larger impacts during restructurings or just sat around and done nothing and gotten paid. Would I be better programmer? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But would I have gotten paid and had a more intact career? Certainly.

mailshanx 5y ago
What do you mean by having an "intact career"? Did leaving too early harm your career, and if yes, how so?
- justrudd 5y ago
  Depends on the company you’re interviewing with and (IME) region you’re looking for work. In my 26 years since graduating university, I’ve had 13 jobs. So an average of 1.8 years per job. My longest was 6 years at Amazon (ironically enough considering they have such a high turnover) and my shortest was 3 weeks (I knew during the interview it wasn’t a good fit, but I was young and they threw a stupid amount of money at me). Where I am now (Seattle area), it isn’t really seen as a that big of a red flag. I always had good reasons for leaving. Other than 2, I’ve tried to never burn bridges intentionally and was even a rebound employee at 1 place (never tell HR during your exit interview what you really think of them). I grew up in the South and moved back there for a brief period of time. It was very hard to find work down there because they called me a “job hopper” (which I was/am). I was asked several times “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. That’s been my experience. I’m at a place now where I can see myself staying for awhile. I’m not curing cancer or doing machine learning or scaling things to gagillion requests per second. But I like the people, like my boss, and the problems are meaty enough to engage me during the day, but not so complicate that I work on them in my off hours.
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    > “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. What's the answer?
    - justrudd 5y ago
      Usually say it with more tact, but it is along the lines of - “Yes. I’m a professional new guy. I’ve seen and worked on a lot of different types of technology, and I come up to speed quickly. I’m not afraid to ask ‘dumb’ questions when I can’t find what I’m looking for.” Something along those lines. I lean into it. But as I said, it doesn’t come up too often in the PNW.
      - DenisM 5y ago
        How about “I leave subpar companies quickly and stay in great companies like Amazon for many years”?
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        I mean, that’s cool, but you haven’t actually adressed the problem, which is that I’ll spend 3 months training you, only to have you quit after 9 more. That’s not really a good investment
        toyg 5y ago
        His point is that it will only take a month to get him up to speed, not 3. But I agree that a better answer would probably be something along the lines of "I have so much experience that I deliver in a year what the average guy would give you in 5; and if you're good to me, I might well stick around as much as I did at X", or something along those lines.
        xboxnolifes 5y ago
        If he's getting hired, it's obviously good enough.
        5y ago
  - kqr 5y ago
    > (never tell HR during your exit interview what you really think of them). I'll offer a corollary: have already said everything you think before you quit. That way, there is nothing else to say during the exit interview anyway. There are two reasons for saying what you think while you're still employed: 1. How will anything improve unless you voice your concerns? (Not saying they will when you do, just that they definitely won't when you don't.) 2. You are paid to think and then communicate your thoughts. If they only wanted your body, they could have bought a robot -- no, they're paying money for your brain too. Give it to them.
    - justrudd 5y ago
      I agree with you. I generally don’t hold anything back in my 1:1, skip level 1:1, etc. But if you’ve communicated effectively, it makes no difference to rehash it to HR on the way out the door. HR, usually, doesn’t care. And I’ve left positions where the company pivoted, and I didn’t agree with the pivot. Told the powers that be, but the pivot was done. No reason to dredge it up again.
- faitswulff 5y ago
  GP here, responding directly. I've been told by a ycombinator company that they want to see 2+ years at an engineering heavy company. I also just regret not making more conventional career choices that you don't have to struggle to explain during interviews. Far easier if you have an unbroken line of employment. But alas.
sciencesama 5y ago
hahaha, so true. But now a days having a career that is more than 3 years is considered weird !
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  It depends hugely on job location market company and myriad other circumstances. Again, HN average experience is not necessarily worldwide average experience :).
raffraffraff 5y ago
As long as you hung around long enough to figure out how to work with difficult people, and learn how your design decisions and code actually run in production (ie: you got to fix your own bugs) then you probably didn't miss much. I worked with one person who had an impressive string of senior roles at big companies, but my personal experience was that they implemented a dumpster fire using the latest hot new thing, and quit after it blew up production a few times.

mailshanx 5y ago

What do you mean by having an "intact career"? Did leaving too early harm your career, and if yes, how so?

justrudd 5y ago
Depends on the company you’re interviewing with and (IME) region you’re looking for work. In my 26 years since graduating university, I’ve had 13 jobs. So an average of 1.8 years per job. My longest was 6 years at Amazon (ironically enough considering they have such a high turnover) and my shortest was 3 weeks (I knew during the interview it wasn’t a good fit, but I was young and they threw a stupid amount of money at me). Where I am now (Seattle area), it isn’t really seen as a that big of a red flag. I always had good reasons for leaving. Other than 2, I’ve tried to never burn bridges intentionally and was even a rebound employee at 1 place (never tell HR during your exit interview what you really think of them). I grew up in the South and moved back there for a brief period of time. It was very hard to find work down there because they called me a “job hopper” (which I was/am). I was asked several times “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. That’s been my experience. I’m at a place now where I can see myself staying for awhile. I’m not curing cancer or doing machine learning or scaling things to gagillion requests per second. But I like the people, like my boss, and the problems are meaty enough to engage me during the day, but not so complicate that I work on them in my off hours.
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  > “You’re going to give me a year and then be gone. Why should I hire you?”. Never had a good answer when I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a pretty good one. What's the answer?
  - justrudd 5y ago
    Usually say it with more tact, but it is along the lines of - “Yes. I’m a professional new guy. I’ve seen and worked on a lot of different types of technology, and I come up to speed quickly. I’m not afraid to ask ‘dumb’ questions when I can’t find what I’m looking for.” Something along those lines. I lean into it. But as I said, it doesn’t come up too often in the PNW.
    - DenisM 5y ago
      How about “I leave subpar companies quickly and stay in great companies like Amazon for many years”?
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      I mean, that’s cool, but you haven’t actually adressed the problem, which is that I’ll spend 3 months training you, only to have you quit after 9 more. That’s not really a good investment
      - toyg 5y ago
        His point is that it will only take a month to get him up to speed, not 3. But I agree that a better answer would probably be something along the lines of "I have so much experience that I deliver in a year what the average guy would give you in 5; and if you're good to me, I might well stick around as much as I did at X", or something along those lines.
      - xboxnolifes 5y ago
        If he's getting hired, it's obviously good enough.
        5y ago
- kqr 5y ago
  > (never tell HR during your exit interview what you really think of them). I'll offer a corollary: have already said everything you think before you quit. That way, there is nothing else to say during the exit interview anyway. There are two reasons for saying what you think while you're still employed: 1. How will anything improve unless you voice your concerns? (Not saying they will when you do, just that they definitely won't when you don't.) 2. You are paid to think and then communicate your thoughts. If they only wanted your body, they could have bought a robot -- no, they're paying money for your brain too. Give it to them.
  - justrudd 5y ago
    I agree with you. I generally don’t hold anything back in my 1:1, skip level 1:1, etc. But if you’ve communicated effectively, it makes no difference to rehash it to HR on the way out the door. HR, usually, doesn’t care. And I’ve left positions where the company pivoted, and I didn’t agree with the pivot. Told the powers that be, but the pivot was done. No reason to dredge it up again.
faitswulff 5y ago
GP here, responding directly. I've been told by a ycombinator company that they want to see 2+ years at an engineering heavy company. I also just regret not making more conventional career choices that you don't have to struggle to explain during interviews. Far easier if you have an unbroken line of employment. But alas.

sciencesama 5y ago

hahaha, so true. But now a days having a career that is more than 3 years is considered weird !

NikolaNovak 5y ago
It depends hugely on job location market company and myriad other circumstances. Again, HN average experience is not necessarily worldwide average experience :).

raffraffraff 5y ago

As long as you hung around long enough to figure out how to work with difficult people, and learn how your design decisions and code actually run in production (ie: you got to fix your own bugs) then you probably didn't miss much. I worked with one person who had an impressive string of senior roles at big companies, but my personal experience was that they implemented a dumpster fire using the latest hot new thing, and quit after it blew up production a few times.