4 ms·

If it's a bad or average situation, the rational person abandons ship at the first available incremental improvement. There is an old saying: once is luck, twi

If it's a bad or average situation, the rational person abandons ship at the first available incremental improvement. There is an old saying: once is luck, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. A similar argument applies to people who have past employments of unusually short tenure. Anyone can have a miss and want to move on. Some people could be really unlucky and have it happen twice. If someone gets five years into their career and still hasn't held down any job for more than a year then something is up. Even if they're the most unlucky employee in history they still won't have the practical experience to match their YOE. They're probably the perfect example of the meme about having five years of experience or one year of experience five times. So hiring that person into a senior role isn't looking like a smart move in any case.

cableshaft 4y ago
5 consecutive jobs on my resume: 1 year: Student software dev job working for the university I attended while in school. Couldn't continue it even if I wanted to. 1 year and 3 months: Game producer for a small game publisher that got some bad luck (and a few bad decisions in hindsight) with a few game releases, and the parent company shut it down. 1 year and 1 month: Lead developer at a tiny app development startup where after a while it became clear the board members funding the company didn't know anything about apps and the executive producer didn't know anything about proper marketing or making sure the product made had an audience (but that became clear a little too late to do anything about it). The apps we made were perfectly good quality, but didn't find an audience. Board members eventually pulled the plug after the fourth app release. 1 year and 2 months: worked as a developer (and project manager/dev on one game) for a company that was doing incredibly well when I joined, but had a string of struggles for the following year after. I was part of a major layoff after a big release when the client decided to stop most of the funding. I could tell things weren't going well with the main client, but it kept looking like maybe we were a month or two out from landing a sweet development contract for various large opportunities to work on a big game for a publisher (none of which ended up panning out), so I stuck around just in case. They never did. 0 years and 9 months: worked as a contractor for a consulting company at a small marketing department at an insurance company, mainly just me and a lead developer. One day the lead developer got fed up with his ideas not being used and walked out and started his own company shortly after. The marketing head at that point decided to do something else with the project and didn't need me anymore so my contract suddenly ended. Next job: 6 years. Joined the company and a few months later they announced getting bought by a major corporation. The merger started and everything started getting shittier, a couple major layoffs happened, people kept leaving on top of that, but I decided to stay, in part, because "I have so many short stints on my resume, I need something longer, I should stay at least 2-3 years!" At 3 years, the large corporation we merged with posted nothing but losses every quarter for 2 years, raises were pretty much nonexistent, the bonus I was hired with got taken away during the merger, and our department had about a third the employees it had when I started...but then the pandemic happened, and they had already closed down our office space, so I was already fully remote, didn't have to deal with any uncertainty about being forced back into the office, so I stayed even longer than I should have. So I've had short stints 5 times in a row, always being laid off for nothing that had to do with my performance or capabilities, and that led to me staying way too long at a shitty job to make up for it. A long stint that almost wasn't, btw, as during one of those major layoffs after the first year, as I found out I was on one of the big layoff lists, until a few people quit before it happened and my boss could lay off less people as a result. Been at my current job for a year, and so far it's been doing well and they've had 5 straight years of rapid growth, but we'll see. I sometimes joke that I'm the Ted McGinley[1] of software companies. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4549382 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4549382
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  I think you read the parent comment uncharitably, and they were referring to job hops, not to layoffs or un-renewed contracts. If I'm looking at your resume I see: 2 layoffs (not your fault), 2 temporary contracts. If you message that in your resume the contracts are a yellow flag (did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops?) but nothing here is telling me you're a runner. I'd happily hire someone with this job history if they interviewed well. I'd be much more adverse to hiring you if you had been an employee at each of these places and stayed as long as you had.
  - FlyingSnake 4y ago
    > I see: 2 layoffs (not your fault), 2 temporary contracts. How would you figure out just by looking at a resumé that the 1 year job experience listed is a layoff?
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      You ask. That's what I've done for folks with 4+ consecutive ~1y stints.
    - Hermitian909 4y ago
      I've seen many resumes that say things like "company went bankrupt" or "Entire department was laid off"
  - vsareto 4y ago
    >did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops? People can elect not to go full time because they don't feel it's the right fit or it's a bad situation. But they don't get any credit for sticking out a bad contract apparently
  - Silhouette 4y ago
    the contracts are a yellow flag (did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops?) I've seen this idea before but it seems like a very odd prejudice to me. Is it a particularly US-centric thing or something? Here in the UK a lot of good people in tech do independent work at some stage in their careers. Salaries for permanent employees tend to hit a ceiling. Contractors and freelancers can potentially price based on value and charge significantly more if they're worth it.

cableshaft 4y ago

5 consecutive jobs on my resume: 1 year: Student software dev job working for the university I attended while in school. Couldn't continue it even if I wanted to. 1 year and 3 months: Game producer for a small game publisher that got some bad luck (and a few bad decisions in hindsight) with a few game releases, and the parent company shut it down. 1 year and 1 month: Lead developer at a tiny app development startup where after a while it became clear the board members funding the company didn't know anything about apps and the executive producer didn't know anything about proper marketing or making sure the product made had an audience (but that became clear a little too late to do anything about it). The apps we made were perfectly good quality, but didn't find an audience. Board members eventually pulled the plug after the fourth app release. 1 year and 2 months: worked as a developer (and project manager/dev on one game) for a company that was doing incredibly well when I joined, but had a string of struggles for the following year after. I was part of a major layoff after a big release when the client decided to stop most of the funding. I could tell things weren't going well with the main client, but it kept looking like maybe we were a month or two out from landing a sweet development contract for various large opportunities to work on a big game for a publisher (none of which ended up panning out), so I stuck around just in case. They never did. 0 years and 9 months: worked as a contractor for a consulting company at a small marketing department at an insurance company, mainly just me and a lead developer. One day the lead developer got fed up with his ideas not being used and walked out and started his own company shortly after. The marketing head at that point decided to do something else with the project and didn't need me anymore so my contract suddenly ended. Next job: 6 years. Joined the company and a few months later they announced getting bought by a major corporation. The merger started and everything started getting shittier, a couple major layoffs happened, people kept leaving on top of that, but I decided to stay, in part, because "I have so many short stints on my resume, I need something longer, I should stay at least 2-3 years!" At 3 years, the large corporation we merged with posted nothing but losses every quarter for 2 years, raises were pretty much nonexistent, the bonus I was hired with got taken away during the merger, and our department had about a third the employees it had when I started...but then the pandemic happened, and they had already closed down our office space, so I was already fully remote, didn't have to deal with any uncertainty about being forced back into the office, so I stayed even longer than I should have. So I've had short stints 5 times in a row, always being laid off for nothing that had to do with my performance or capabilities, and that led to me staying way too long at a shitty job to make up for it. A long stint that almost wasn't, btw, as during one of those major layoffs after the first year, as I found out I was on one of the big layoff lists, until a few people quit before it happened and my boss could lay off less people as a result. Been at my current job for a year, and so far it's been doing well and they've had 5 straight years of rapid growth, but we'll see. I sometimes joke that I'm the Ted McGinley[1] of software companies. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4549382 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4549382

Hermitian909 4y ago
I think you read the parent comment uncharitably, and they were referring to job hops, not to layoffs or un-renewed contracts. If I'm looking at your resume I see: 2 layoffs (not your fault), 2 temporary contracts. If you message that in your resume the contracts are a yellow flag (did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops?) but nothing here is telling me you're a runner. I'd happily hire someone with this job history if they interviewed well. I'd be much more adverse to hiring you if you had been an employee at each of these places and stayed as long as you had.
- FlyingSnake 4y ago
  > I see: 2 layoffs (not your fault), 2 temporary contracts. How would you figure out just by looking at a resumé that the 1 year job experience listed is a layoff?
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    You ask. That's what I've done for folks with 4+ consecutive ~1y stints.
  - Hermitian909 4y ago
    I've seen many resumes that say things like "company went bankrupt" or "Entire department was laid off"
- vsareto 4y ago
  >did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops? People can elect not to go full time because they don't feel it's the right fit or it's a bad situation. But they don't get any credit for sticking out a bad contract apparently
- Silhouette 4y ago
  the contracts are a yellow flag (did they not get full time employment because they lacked chops?) I've seen this idea before but it seems like a very odd prejudice to me. Is it a particularly US-centric thing or something? Here in the UK a lot of good people in tech do independent work at some stage in their careers. Salaries for permanent employees tend to hit a ceiling. Contractors and freelancers can potentially price based on value and charge significantly more if they're worth it.