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When looking at his LinkedIn, I only see one job with tenure over 4 years almost 10 years back and most other jobs are well below 2 years. It seems like he defi

• decafninja 5y ago
  If we were talking about SWEs, I'd say short tenures are now considered a pro, not a con. Likewise, staying too long at a company (say, 5+ years), seems to be considered a big red flag now. Exceptions given if company is FAANGMULA or similar caliber. For a managerial or leadership position? I can't say, to be honest, but what you say makes sense. Then again, I'd say long tenures as a SWE ought to be considered a positive too (or at least not a negative), but it isn't, so...
  • VirusNewbie 5y ago
    I think the opposite. Usually a short (sub 2 years) tenure at a company means they're on the chopping block, bonuses didn't come through, refreshers weren't granted, stock options didn't continue, etc.
    • novok 5y ago
      Or stock performance has been bad for the past 2 years? Or they got a bad team and its time to move on?
    • decafninja 5y ago
      I mean, I agree, personally. But my encounters in the wild while interviewing, plus comments on Blind, etc. would indicate the wider consensus is that short tenures are preferable to long tenures.
    • halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
      How can you assume that? Especially when people are moving around constantly due to lack of promotions, compensation or recognition. It’s essentially religion at this point to hop every 2 years to “level up”.
      • wyclif 5y ago
        Yup. It's common knowledge that in average Big Tech company culture, the easiest way to get a raise, better total comp, or a promotion is to get a new job every 2-3 years. Why would any engineer put himself/herself through a review process to get a measly sub-10% increase when they can get 20%+ by interviewing?
        • decafninja 5y ago
          Speaking as someone who was recently outside of FAANGMULA type companies, but now finally got in... Right now I'm just thankful where I am now. My compensation quadrupled coming from an investment bank. I actually suspect my compensation might actually be a bit lower than my peers at this company or those like it, relatively speaking, but at this point I don't care. Combined with the fact that the work and project are super interesting, I could live with this compensation and title until I retire (in my late 30s now). I'm certainly in no hurry to put myself through leetcoding again, though to cover all my bases I probably ought to follow the principle of "a leetcode a day keeps unemployment at bay" sooner rather than later again.
          • angrais 5y ago
            How do you reconcile that your peers likely earn more than you, and perhaps then, you were underpaid for your (negotiation) skills of the same position?
            • decafninja 5y ago
              I don't imagine the delta is extreme. I know the delta exists because post-hire, my manager implied it, and that he would do his best to close it. Part of it is my lack of negotiation skills as you say (also implied by my boss), and part of it is because my background is coming from an unsexy non-tech company (implied by the internal recruiter). But even if the delta remains, I'm just plain thankful*. The amount I'm earning now is jawdropping for my wife and I. When I was interviewing around, we were half-joking how awesome it would be if I could replicate those stories you see on Blind about people doubling their compensation. That it quadrupled instead is shocking. * Probably not a popular thing to say in tech circles, but my wife and I are Christian, and suffice it to say we are mindblowingly thankful to God for this. I don't endorse prosperity gospel, but I'm now earning more than we know how to utilize. We've committed to using at least some of it for good causes - my first month's salary was given wholesale to a charity trying to rescue/resettle/support Afghan refugees.
    • vultour 5y ago
      Except for the first one these all seem like a good reason for leaving, why would you hold that against someone?
      • VirusNewbie 5y ago
        In wouldn’t hold it against them I wouldn’t just assume a short tenure is good thing and I’d want to ask for more info.
  • friedman23 5y ago
    If I look at someone's linkedin and all their positions have been for <2 years it's a major red flag.
    • decafninja 5y ago
      I mean, I agree, personally. But my encounters in the wild while interviewing, plus comments on Blind, etc. would indicate the wider consensus is that short tenures are preferable to long tenures.
      • friedman23 5y ago
        To whom? Maybe to recruiters who get a commission for every person they bring on?
        • decafninja 5y ago
          Interviewing SWEs, hiring managers, etc. Apparently long tenures denote being an expert beginner, 1 year of experience repeated 5 times instead of 5 years of experience, complacency, laziness, things like that. Again, I don't agree with this personally, but this seems to be the prevailing attitude. People like you and I being a minority. There seem to be exceptions - the chief one being if you stuck around at a top company versus a mediocre one, that doesn't ding you much.
          • aix1 5y ago
            I work at one such "top company". Internal mobility is very, very easy and well-supported by the company (great business choice IMO). I am not sure if would even make sense to talk about "sticking around" at the company level. One can easily choose between 1x5yrs of experience, 5x1yr or anywhere in between. (This is obviously orthogonal to your point about perceptions and attitudes, but I felt compelled to chime in.)
          • jonas21 5y ago
            Isn't this just another way of saying that working for a mediocre company isn't a negative signal unless you stay there a long time?
  • atty 5y ago
    At my company at least, we definitely prefer longer average tenures over shorter ones. Very short stays (say less than 2-3 years) and many hops implies you’re more interested in filling out your resume and jumping to the next pay raise than you are in making any meaningful contribution to the work our team is doing. I would never consider someone staying at their current job for 5+ years a negative, unless it is accompanied by negative references from coworkers.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      Where are you that 2-3 years is short? At any company I have been with, 3 years would make you an absolute veteran. This is for the usual reason of not getting raises, so veterans tend to be very underpaid.
      • lovich 5y ago
        +1 for this. At six months At my current place I am in the top half of engineers for seniority and this has been one of the nicest places I’ve ever worked. At previous companies I’ve been in meetings where high level managers veto prospective hires the entire team wanted because they had been at their current company for “too long” where “too long” was 4 years without moving into management. It’s not uncommon in my experience to hear engineers say they would view tenures of 2-3 years as a red flag for hiring other engineers, but the hiring managers who actually make the decision have always preferred short tenures of hopping around or staying at one place only if there’s a title change every ~2 years.
        • xvilka 5y ago
          It makes sense since such people have more diverse experience and more adaptive, agile. They could bring new perspective to the team. I would say balanced approach is better - part of long tenure applicants and part of the hopping ones.
        • MattGaiser 5y ago
          I get why engineers hate it. I am on a team where at 2 months, if we become fully staffed at some point, I will be in the top half of seniority between resignations and transfers to new teams. It is quite concerning to see so much knowledge about how things work walk out the door and it is miserable if something goes wrong and nobody left knows it existed. So I get why engineers view a year as hit and run. But yes, companies seem to interpret staying a year or two as evidence of growth/a highly desirable candidate.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • pixelatedindex 5y ago
    I have heard of FAANG, but what is MULA?
    • igetspam 5y ago
      Microsoft... Uber... LinkedIn... Another... ? Total guess.
      • chris_hawkes 5y ago
        That is right, along with Airbnb
        • decafninja 5y ago
          Always thought the "L" was for Lyft, but I suppose LinkedIn works too.
          • whiskyant 5y ago
            LinkedIn is basically Microsoft, so it's covered by the M.
          • pixelatedindex 5y ago
            I had no idea Lyft and Uber both paid as much as FAANG - the stock prices don’t seem to correlate (it’s sub-50 compared to the rest), nor did I think they paid as well as Google, Microsoft or Facebook. Since when was this a thing? I guess I was under a rock when it came to this :)
            • decafninja 5y ago
              It's been a while. For that matter, I think Lyft, Uber, & Airbnb are capable of paying more on average than Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon at least. Or at least that's the impression I get on Blind.
  • comeonseriously 5y ago
    "Sorry Fred, you meet, even exceed, all of our expectations for the position, however you prefer to stay too long, so fuck right off." Seriously? This is absurd.
    • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      I think it depends on whether Fred continued to find opportunities for growth during his long stay. If he can describe how he was meeting his career goals while also staying in the same position for nine years, then there's no reason to avoid him. But if he spent the last six years stagnating, it might be worth giving extra scrutiny to how up-to-date his skillset is.
      • yardstick 5y ago
        Replace “career goals” with “value to the business” and I would agree. I don’t care about personal development to the same degree as making money. That’s what the business is about after all.
        • deleted 5y ago
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        • decafninja 5y ago
          Also I don't think anyone will outright reject you for staying too long at one company. What they'll do is see it as a red flag and dig into it and find out what the circumstances were. If they feel those circumstances are ok, then you're fine. If they feel they were not ok, then you'll get dinged. Versus back when I started my career, it would have been a universally positive indicator, that would score you points over a "job hopper". Nowadays it seems the job hopper is in a better position.
        • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
          I dunno, if I make a list of leaders I've worked with that I'd want to hire if I started my own thing... I'm sure keeping the machine alive and the paychecks flowing was near the top of their priority list, but most of their decisions seemed motivated by other things. Improve safety for the users. Preserve the sanity of the ops team. Start actually competing for our business instead of relying on relationships with politicians. That sort of thing. Most often these hireworthy behaviors correlate with bringing value to the business, but sometimes the business's values need correcting.
• deleted 5y ago
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• dilyevsky 5y ago
  I’ve never had a same manager for longer than 2 years in my entire 14y career. In fact average is around 1 year. Even if they stay at the same company they sure move teams around frequently. Directors and above tend to stay for longer.
  • aiisjustanif 5y ago
    I came here to say this as well I was at a company for 6 years. Much more after often I would see managers hop every 2-3 years and be the one to get raises and promotions. I have been in the final stages of a interview and reject an offer for personal reasons, had the manager say to me “I’m looking for people who are here to stay and make a career, so let me know if you reconsider”. He had been a manager for a year and half… I found out not to long ago he left to become a Sr. Manager else where. These rules around tenure are silly. If you have impact in 2 years or less that’s all that matters.
• wreath 5y ago
  I don't think this is only for leadership roles. If you don't stick around long enough to see how your work has evolved, your APIs have been used, how easy is it to adapt your work to new requirements, how you handed over ownership to someone else/another team etc etc, I think you left very valuable learning opportunities on the table. Job hopping attitude is very visible in someone's work as well. You see them focusing on short term gains only with most of their technical decisions and leave the mess for someone else to cleanup while they move on to the next thing. Zero skin in the game.
  • personjerry 5y ago
    As an employee you should never think of yourself as having skin in the game. The company pays you for your time and expertise and compensates for your time. How successfully they leverage that time and expertise is on them, not on you. Job hopping is the most effective way to increase your income and position in tech.
    • sean2 5y ago
      I think you misunderstood the parent posts. It's that your impact on a particular project doesn't become visible for a few years. If you think you quit after delivering your project near to budget and timeline, then you're left thinking you did a pretty good job, but only later is it possible to see if your architectural decisions are easy to maintain; if your API is easy to use; etc. The Senior Roles are supposed to have grown in knowledge about how all their decisions play out over a long time period, but if they've never stick around to observe the consequences of their decisions, then that might lead a recruiter to suspect whether they have learned what a Senior would be expected to know.
• eez0 5y ago
  By contrast, I have recently accepted a new position, and in almost every interview I was asked, with a negative connotation, why I had stayed so long (6 years) with my current employer.
  • dgb23 5y ago
    In my opinion it can be a sign of loyalty, depth, engagement and responsibility among other things. I don’t understand how this can be viewed as a negative. Seems almost pathological to me to suggest that job hopping is preferred.
    • bradlys 5y ago
      Very few companies increase their pay in line with market trends. If you’re at a company for 6 years, you’re likely getting paid undermarket rate. When I see someone doing that - I wonder, “are they not willing to go outside their comfort zone even when there are clear benefits?” Personally - I’ve had no issues getting a job. I’ve job hopped consistently since I started working in 2013. I haven’t had a single job last more than a couple years. I will be looking for a new job in 2022 as well. I don’t expect anything bad to happen due to my hopping. It’s a norm within the industry. If companies didn’t want this to happen then they’d work harder at retaining talent.
    • aiisjustanif 5y ago
      You do realize you are on HackerNews, where Paul Graham says it’s a negative trait for founders, start up workers, etc. So most companies that are growing or are looking to change directions will feel this way. If you are at the same company people want to at the very least see growth. Positional or responsibility wise. I rather hire someone with multiple 2-3 year stints, than someone with one 8 year job. But it’s only a small part of the hiring equation.
• pdimitar 5y ago
  > I don’t see anyone being an effective leader by only sticking around for less than 2 years. Having tenures less than 2 years especially at senior roles doesn’t give a lot of positive feelings of leadership in my opinion. This is an awful mindset and one wish would just get deleted forever from all the memory of all humans for good. I've been trying to find a senior dev position for the last ~20 months and most gigs I only lasted 3 months and that was because all employers (except one) didn't adhere to the agreed upon contract because let's face it, how will I enforce it? So I was left with a few CTOs asking me why am I job hopping and they didn't believe me that I busted my arse working to prove myself on every single gig I landed in the mentioned period but was given super unfair conditions and deadlines and was met with expectations that the most senior dev in their company couldn't adhere to. So please, do consider that what you say is only one side of the coin. I don't know if it was bad luck or me emitting the wrong signals during interviews; likely the latter because Occam's Razor says so. But even if that's the case, I feel I didn't deserve the skepticism that was projected towards me. The interviewers came to the interview already assuming that I am a job hopper. It is not fair.
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    If you meet one person who's an asshole, they're probably an asshole. If every person you meet is an asshole... Consider some self-reflection.
    • pdimitar 5y ago
      Have you considered that I had exit interviews and gathered actual feedback before generalizing? Don't answer, it's obvious that you haven't. It's also obvious that you didn't notice that my previous comment did contain self-reflection. I always seek the blame in myself first. That doesn't mean that blame is always in me however. Bad luck or poorly communicated expectations happen to all of us.
      • horsawlarway 5y ago
        So chiming back in here a few days later since it will probably be just you that sees this... Go read this comment chain again and consider if the way you commented here actually helped you at all. I know for sure that I wouldn't hire you with the attitude you're expressing here (and unlike you, I'm a senior engineer who's involved in hiring) - some thoughts: You seem to want to fight. You're getting emotional and angry. Things are "Obvious" to you. (So obvious!) You're throwing off red flags left and right - To the point where I almost believe you that all your gigs suck, since I can't imagine many decent companies agreeing to hire you in the first place. I'll take a generous approach, and assume you're really venting here, and acting in a way you wouldn't at work. So take it or leave it, here's my piece of advice (and don't worry - I won't comment again). --- There's a sliding scale for how people tend to judge others at work - You can be EXCELLENT at the literal job, but if you're miserable in social interactions, you're going to be a mediocre employee at best. Alternatively, you can be stunningly underwhelming at the actual job (even just plain bad, honestly), but as long as people enjoy doing it with you, you will also be a mediocre employee. If folks have to pick between mediocre employees, people pick the guy they enjoy working with. This applies for basically all choices (who gets hired, who gets fired, who gets promoted, who gets bonuses, etc). Is it fair? No of course not, nothing is "fair". Your best bet is to be positive on both sides of the scale - be somewhat enjoyable to work with, and do the job ok. Your worst bet is to be painful to work with, and egotistical about how valuable you are. If you can only pick one - prefer being easy to work with. It pays better dividends and is more transferable.