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As long as you are classified as an at will employee you should give your employer at will loyalty. They don't owe you anything and you don't owe them anything

As long as you are classified as an at will employee you should give your employer at will loyalty. They don't owe you anything and you don't owe them anything either beyond the responsibilities of your job in exchange for whatever they're paying you. It's up to them to make sticking around your best option. But when I'm on interview panels and someone brings up that the person in question is a job hopper, rather than see that as a negative, I see it as a challenge to find a way to get that person to stick around. And the only thing that offends me when someone quits is if the offer to do so isn't better than sticking around. I am not popular with my fellow managers with this attitude and I expect downvotes for this. Bring 'em. It really doesn't matter to me anymore, the remainder of my career will be spent on making hard things easier rather than making easy things harder.

ghaff 5y ago
No reason to downvote you. However, if someone has generally changed jobs every year or two and I wouldn't hire someone who I knew with certainty would only stay that long, I might think I'm special enough that I can keep them around. But I'd probably be wrong.
- varelse 5y ago
  And that's the thing, it's okay with me if I'm wrong. Or as I responded to a doctor who asked a similar question: "Do all your patients live?" It's not a question of being special to me, it's a challenge to figure out what will make them stick around and make the company money and it's usually strongly correlated in my experience.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  I can only speak for myself but so much of my job hopping is geared towards both getting more money but just as importantly trying to find an environment I really like. I want to find work that is fulfilling and that does not make me dread Mondays. I have reached a level financially where while I can always use more I make more than I ever reasonably expected to make and I am making far far less than many on here. My years are precious I want to spend them somewhere that I like both the people I work with and the work I do.
  - varelse 5y ago
    Yes you have figured out the secret (tm) in my opinion. Sturgeon's law applies to tech which is to say 90% of it is crap. Don't waste your time with that 90% and if you find yourself in one of those positions feel no guilt whatsoever running away as fast as you can.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Please read this to avoid bias: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lizryan_the-dumbest-part-of-employers-bias-against-activity-6846435502795689984-fvsd/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lizryan_the-dumbest-part-of-e...
- wyclif 5y ago
  But the grandparent comment assumes that you can keep a certain percentage of engineers you want to by making them an offer that gets them to stick around.
simplestats 5y ago
Is "at will" the right term here? What's the alternative, granting you tenure at their little company or something? If you are an at-will employee who is kept around, then might that demonstrate actual loyalty (and probably higher pay) versus being at a place that is prohibited by law from laying you off without good cause? Perhaps you mean if they treat employees like a commodity. They can do that withoug laying people off; universities tend to treat their tenured faculty this way also. Optimizing for getting the most work out of the witth the lowest cost. If so, then yes employees should, in turn, act like the job is a commodity and try to optimize income-minus-costs on their end too.
- varelse 5y ago
  If I have to sign an agreement that gives my employer permission to terminate me at any time for any reason with or without cause, they should not be surprised that it also grants me the right to quit at any time for any reason with or without cause. And yet, all that fuss about these job hoppers. How about creating an environment and culture where sticking around beats job hopping instead? As for the alternative? Check out the severance packages that executives and TLAs get. Try scaling that down to the employee level. Not going to happen.
  - simplestats 5y ago
    Well in the past employees got ISO's. Now employees are getting RSU's. And in our lawsuit-happy culture (with a perverse incentive for companies to always settle lawsuits even when they can win), even the most employee-friendly place probably needs such an agreement for CYA reasons. I do agree ecompanies can do a much better job of treating employees like partners instead of "resources" to optimize. Even on HN, we have fellow engineers talking of the importance of (soul-crushing) processes that ensure no one is essential. As if it's undesirable to let anyone be special or important...
    - varelse 5y ago
      RSUs happened IMO because Warren Buffett didn't understand tech. But they're fine, really, the same competitive pressures that led to compelling ISOs now lead to compelling RSUs. Not sure what problem that solved though but give me a couple beers and I'll probably come up with one. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/business/stock-options-are-faulted-by-buffett.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/business/stock-options-ar...
to11mtm 5y ago
Eh, Hoppers I don't worry about. Jumpers, OTOH, Are a negative. The difference (at least to me) is time. Hoppers are people who typically change jobs every 1.5-3 years. Jumpers, will have a long history of 6 month stints, very few if any gigs longer than a year. At most places I've worked, depending on the quality of on-boarding it took most engineers 1-3 months to be productive, and 3-12 months to understand the system well enough to make impactful changes to the ecosystem safely.
- varelse 5y ago
  There's a trade off between exploration and exploitation. And sometimes, because they put on their best face to recruit you, you can't figure out that a seemingly promising idea is actually nonsense and it will never work without joining the effort for at least a month or two to go far enough down the rabbit hole until you realize it's full of manure. I've lasted anywhere from 30 days to over a decade depending on the gig. And every one of those moves was the right choice. I prefer to rely on my own research of the person's career track and the number of people they can summon as references to say nice things about them. Tech culture brings out survival traits and I'm not going to hold anything against people who act in their own best interest.

ghaff 5y ago

No reason to downvote you. However, if someone has generally changed jobs every year or two and I wouldn't hire someone who I knew with certainty would only stay that long, I might think I'm special enough that I can keep them around. But I'd probably be wrong.

varelse 5y ago
And that's the thing, it's okay with me if I'm wrong. Or as I responded to a doctor who asked a similar question: "Do all your patients live?" It's not a question of being special to me, it's a challenge to figure out what will make them stick around and make the company money and it's usually strongly correlated in my experience.
wonderwonder 5y ago
I can only speak for myself but so much of my job hopping is geared towards both getting more money but just as importantly trying to find an environment I really like. I want to find work that is fulfilling and that does not make me dread Mondays. I have reached a level financially where while I can always use more I make more than I ever reasonably expected to make and I am making far far less than many on here. My years are precious I want to spend them somewhere that I like both the people I work with and the work I do.
- varelse 5y ago
  Yes you have figured out the secret (tm) in my opinion. Sturgeon's law applies to tech which is to say 90% of it is crap. Don't waste your time with that 90% and if you find yourself in one of those positions feel no guilt whatsoever running away as fast as you can.
mgh2 5y ago
Please read this to avoid bias: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lizryan_the-dumbest-part-of-employers-bias-against-activity-6846435502795689984-fvsd/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lizryan_the-dumbest-part-of-e...
wyclif 5y ago
But the grandparent comment assumes that you can keep a certain percentage of engineers you want to by making them an offer that gets them to stick around.

simplestats 5y ago

Is "at will" the right term here? What's the alternative, granting you tenure at their little company or something? If you are an at-will employee who is kept around, then might that demonstrate actual loyalty (and probably higher pay) versus being at a place that is prohibited by law from laying you off without good cause? Perhaps you mean if they treat employees like a commodity. They can do that withoug laying people off; universities tend to treat their tenured faculty this way also. Optimizing for getting the most work out of the witth the lowest cost. If so, then yes employees should, in turn, act like the job is a commodity and try to optimize income-minus-costs on their end too.

varelse 5y ago
If I have to sign an agreement that gives my employer permission to terminate me at any time for any reason with or without cause, they should not be surprised that it also grants me the right to quit at any time for any reason with or without cause. And yet, all that fuss about these job hoppers. How about creating an environment and culture where sticking around beats job hopping instead? As for the alternative? Check out the severance packages that executives and TLAs get. Try scaling that down to the employee level. Not going to happen.
- simplestats 5y ago
  Well in the past employees got ISO's. Now employees are getting RSU's. And in our lawsuit-happy culture (with a perverse incentive for companies to always settle lawsuits even when they can win), even the most employee-friendly place probably needs such an agreement for CYA reasons. I do agree ecompanies can do a much better job of treating employees like partners instead of "resources" to optimize. Even on HN, we have fellow engineers talking of the importance of (soul-crushing) processes that ensure no one is essential. As if it's undesirable to let anyone be special or important...
  - varelse 5y ago
    RSUs happened IMO because Warren Buffett didn't understand tech. But they're fine, really, the same competitive pressures that led to compelling ISOs now lead to compelling RSUs. Not sure what problem that solved though but give me a couple beers and I'll probably come up with one. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/business/stock-options-are-faulted-by-buffett.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/business/stock-options-ar...

to11mtm 5y ago

Eh, Hoppers I don't worry about. Jumpers, OTOH, Are a negative. The difference (at least to me) is time. Hoppers are people who typically change jobs every 1.5-3 years. Jumpers, will have a long history of 6 month stints, very few if any gigs longer than a year. At most places I've worked, depending on the quality of on-boarding it took most engineers 1-3 months to be productive, and 3-12 months to understand the system well enough to make impactful changes to the ecosystem safely.

varelse 5y ago
There's a trade off between exploration and exploitation. And sometimes, because they put on their best face to recruit you, you can't figure out that a seemingly promising idea is actually nonsense and it will never work without joining the effort for at least a month or two to go far enough down the rabbit hole until you realize it's full of manure. I've lasted anywhere from 30 days to over a decade depending on the gig. And every one of those moves was the right choice. I prefer to rely on my own research of the person's career track and the number of people they can summon as references to say nice things about them. Tech culture brings out survival traits and I'm not going to hold anything against people who act in their own best interest.