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As a former hiring manager of software engineers, I can shed some light on when (and why) I don't like to see short tenures. 1) In a large software engineering

As a former hiring manager of software engineers, I can shed some light on when (and why) I don't like to see short tenures. 1) In a large software engineering organization (1000s of employees), knowledge of internal issues becomes a much bigger bar to getting something shipped than simple chops. When you look at big product failures from companies like Microsoft/Google/etc. they're much more due to the company making bad decisions rather than individual engineers not being technically competent enough. Guiding the company to better decisions is something that you can only get really good at with time and repeated interactions with people (although time certainly doesn't mean you'll get good at it!) 2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC. 3) There are some scenarios where I don't need someone to develop knowledge of the internal org, in fact I need to bring in external knowledge. For example, nobody in the company has done anything but React Native and I need someone with React Native experience to help jumpstart something. Here I'd happily hire a job hopper as they will get a working prototype built faster than anyone else, and by the time they're gone the org will likely have made a decision on whether to staff up a full team around it or scrap it.

avmich 4y ago
> A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC. Why do you think so? Is it because you project job hopping in the past into the future history of working in your company, and so IC won't have time to become CEO? Or because of something else?
- squokko 4y ago
  Literally none of the managers and higher levels that I've ever worked for have been job hoppers. They haven't all been lifers, but like a new job every ~5 years kind of thing, which in this industry is not a "job hopper."
  - avmich 4y ago
    Why there is such imbalance? Why, for example, people aren't progressing that fast in their career, if they job hop? Or actually do they?
    - squokko 4y ago
      Depends what you want. If you want to make maximum comp as an IC, job hop early on and then settle in and collect cash. If you want to be in senior management the tactics are much different.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
Job hoppers tend to climb the ladder faster than people who don't job hop. Also, they often end up doing several stints at the same company over their careers. The job hopper is probably more likely to be CEO than a lifer.
- squokko 4y ago
  Maybe at some companies that I don't know. At the larger places that I've worked, the CEOs have had 1-5 jobs over ~20-30 years before becoming CEO.
- richardw 4y ago
  I’ve been thinking for a couple minutes and don’t know of a well-known CEO who fits your claim. For it to be true, more than 50% would have to be. Or do you mean CEO of lots of little companies, therefore more likely? Either way, those CEO’s deserve to try run their businesses when filled with job hoppers. It better be a simple company that doesn’t benefit from any organisational memory. Do VC’s invest in job hoppers or do you think they might be aware of any…warning signs?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The well-known CEOs are often not the norm, and if you look at the staff underneath them, you will see a lot of mercenaries who job-hopped. The CEOs of smaller companies are often professional CEOs. Research studies also suggest that job hopping is the way to raise your salary and job level faster than being loyal, although I think the optimal tenure is 2-3 years (which is longer than a lot of modern job hoppers).
    - richardw 4y ago
      I think you’re right.
- dijit 4y ago
  I don't agree with this actually. Conventional wisdom is that job hopping is a great way to progress but the reality is: Job hopping forces an evaluation of your skills and values on the market. The problem with the second statement is that it only works for positions that are hiring, and that means there is an invisible ceiling when certain roles are internal promotions only. The last 5 people to become my manager did so by being hired internally. The only time I've seen an external director hire in any of my companies was when the company was small or that person had been a director level employee at a rival company.
khazhoux 4y ago
> In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC Strong disagree with this sentiment. I think you (or your company) are alone in the expectation or hope that an IC candidate would have even the remotest chance of rising to director or above. Every engineering manager I've ever known, when they hire for an IC role they're looking for an awesome IC and that's it. Their hope is that the IC will have the chops, scope, and leadership to build awesome systems/products and grow up the technical ladder.
- jtokoph 4y ago
  At many companies now, the requirement to be promoted from Manager to Senior Manager is having X number of managers under you. This is frequently done by splitting the responsibilities of your current team into multiple teams. A great way to accelerate that is to have one of your ICs with context and rapport transition into managing one of the sub teams.
  - lgleason 4y ago
    This is what ends up killing companies. Too many levels of management which causes massive inefficiency.
    - to11mtm 4y ago
      Yep. There's also the slightly more twisted version of this, where companies have special 'leadership' training programs and the employees on teams get 'hand picked' by their managers or the org. It tends to lead to lead to knock-on effects like managers selecting for sycophants in hiring, the program being used as an additional carrot/stick (I saw one abusive manager threaten to get someone 'knocked out' of the program I'm thinking of,) as well as generally causing a level of artificial false seniority.
- squokko 4y ago
  I would say that yes, my job isn’t to hire the next CEO of the company, but the organization places constraints on hiring that eventually yield this. For example, the entire in-office culture vs WFH may be a way of identifying “straight shooters with upper management written all over them.” And that hiring ICs who can become managers directly makes me more likely to become a Director.
lgleason 4y ago
For every 1 in 10 engineers that you promote to being a manager, less than 1 in 10 of them will be any good at it because the skills needed to be good at the former are different from the ones needed for the latter. This is a mistake that I see being made time and time again. Ironically, this also contributes to job hopping and turnover among engineers who are subjected to these bad managers.
club_tropical 4y ago
This sounds like you've been at minority-shareholder-operated companies (as opposed to owner or majority-shareholder operated). They are managerialized and the reason job-hoppers are negative is that it is a bureaucratic organization with multiple competing power centers. Things get done based on favors and insider relationships, as opposed to a clear authority. Since it takes a while to build up a "balance" of favors to call upon, it takes a long time to be productive. That's the real reason. #1 is a direct consequence of this structure, #2 is a side consequence. There's no good reason you couldn't hire senior people from outside - the only reason to favor promoting from within so heavily is that they have decrypted the power factions while they were "cheaper" junior employees. #3 just sounds like an exception situation - if you were actually tasked to "staff up a full team" - you would no longer consider job-hoppers, for all the previous reasons.
- squokko 4y ago
  Yes, I am talking about very large (Fortune 500) companies
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> 2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC. I'm sorry but this is simply a laughable idea. I encourage you to check in your company how many directors+ were hired externally VS were promoted internally. I guarantee you 80% will come from outside.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Without actively researching the question, I'd say where I am it's closer to the flip of that. Almost certainly the majority are internal promotions.
Manjuuu 4y ago
I wonder if you ever entertained the thought of short tenures being driven by the company environments (hard to find a good fit, a place where you want to stay more than a couple of years) and by some characteristics of the industry as a whole (job hopping=more money). And I'm saying this as someone that has never worked less than 5 years in the same place.

avmich 4y ago

> A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC. Why do you think so? Is it because you project job hopping in the past into the future history of working in your company, and so IC won't have time to become CEO? Or because of something else?

squokko 4y ago
Literally none of the managers and higher levels that I've ever worked for have been job hoppers. They haven't all been lifers, but like a new job every ~5 years kind of thing, which in this industry is not a "job hopper."
- avmich 4y ago
  Why there is such imbalance? Why, for example, people aren't progressing that fast in their career, if they job hop? Or actually do they?
  - squokko 4y ago
    Depends what you want. If you want to make maximum comp as an IC, job hop early on and then settle in and collect cash. If you want to be in senior management the tactics are much different.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

Job hoppers tend to climb the ladder faster than people who don't job hop. Also, they often end up doing several stints at the same company over their careers. The job hopper is probably more likely to be CEO than a lifer.

squokko 4y ago
Maybe at some companies that I don't know. At the larger places that I've worked, the CEOs have had 1-5 jobs over ~20-30 years before becoming CEO.
richardw 4y ago
I’ve been thinking for a couple minutes and don’t know of a well-known CEO who fits your claim. For it to be true, more than 50% would have to be. Or do you mean CEO of lots of little companies, therefore more likely? Either way, those CEO’s deserve to try run their businesses when filled with job hoppers. It better be a simple company that doesn’t benefit from any organisational memory. Do VC’s invest in job hoppers or do you think they might be aware of any…warning signs?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The well-known CEOs are often not the norm, and if you look at the staff underneath them, you will see a lot of mercenaries who job-hopped. The CEOs of smaller companies are often professional CEOs. Research studies also suggest that job hopping is the way to raise your salary and job level faster than being loyal, although I think the optimal tenure is 2-3 years (which is longer than a lot of modern job hoppers).
  - richardw 4y ago
    I think you’re right.
dijit 4y ago
I don't agree with this actually. Conventional wisdom is that job hopping is a great way to progress but the reality is: Job hopping forces an evaluation of your skills and values on the market. The problem with the second statement is that it only works for positions that are hiring, and that means there is an invisible ceiling when certain roles are internal promotions only. The last 5 people to become my manager did so by being hired internally. The only time I've seen an external director hire in any of my companies was when the company was small or that person had been a director level employee at a rival company.

khazhoux 4y ago

> In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC Strong disagree with this sentiment. I think you (or your company) are alone in the expectation or hope that an IC candidate would have even the remotest chance of rising to director or above. Every engineering manager I've ever known, when they hire for an IC role they're looking for an awesome IC and that's it. Their hope is that the IC will have the chops, scope, and leadership to build awesome systems/products and grow up the technical ladder.

jtokoph 4y ago
At many companies now, the requirement to be promoted from Manager to Senior Manager is having X number of managers under you. This is frequently done by splitting the responsibilities of your current team into multiple teams. A great way to accelerate that is to have one of your ICs with context and rapport transition into managing one of the sub teams.
- lgleason 4y ago
  This is what ends up killing companies. Too many levels of management which causes massive inefficiency.
  - to11mtm 4y ago
    Yep. There's also the slightly more twisted version of this, where companies have special 'leadership' training programs and the employees on teams get 'hand picked' by their managers or the org. It tends to lead to lead to knock-on effects like managers selecting for sycophants in hiring, the program being used as an additional carrot/stick (I saw one abusive manager threaten to get someone 'knocked out' of the program I'm thinking of,) as well as generally causing a level of artificial false seniority.
squokko 4y ago
I would say that yes, my job isn’t to hire the next CEO of the company, but the organization places constraints on hiring that eventually yield this. For example, the entire in-office culture vs WFH may be a way of identifying “straight shooters with upper management written all over them.” And that hiring ICs who can become managers directly makes me more likely to become a Director.

lgleason 4y ago

For every 1 in 10 engineers that you promote to being a manager, less than 1 in 10 of them will be any good at it because the skills needed to be good at the former are different from the ones needed for the latter. This is a mistake that I see being made time and time again. Ironically, this also contributes to job hopping and turnover among engineers who are subjected to these bad managers.

club_tropical 4y ago

This sounds like you've been at minority-shareholder-operated companies (as opposed to owner or majority-shareholder operated). They are managerialized and the reason job-hoppers are negative is that it is a bureaucratic organization with multiple competing power centers. Things get done based on favors and insider relationships, as opposed to a clear authority. Since it takes a while to build up a "balance" of favors to call upon, it takes a long time to be productive. That's the real reason. #1 is a direct consequence of this structure, #2 is a side consequence. There's no good reason you couldn't hire senior people from outside - the only reason to favor promoting from within so heavily is that they have decrypted the power factions while they were "cheaper" junior employees. #3 just sounds like an exception situation - if you were actually tasked to "staff up a full team" - you would no longer consider job-hoppers, for all the previous reasons.

squokko 4y ago
Yes, I am talking about very large (Fortune 500) companies

iLoveOncall 4y ago

> 2) In hiring any software engineer, the organization needs me to have a 1/10th chance of hiring a future manager, 1/50th chance of future Director, 1/1000th chance of hiring a future VP, and 1 in 25,000th chance of hiring a future CEO of the company. A job hopper is unlikely to become anything but an IC. I'm sorry but this is simply a laughable idea. I encourage you to check in your company how many directors+ were hired externally VS were promoted internally. I guarantee you 80% will come from outside.

ghaff 4y ago
Without actively researching the question, I'd say where I am it's closer to the flip of that. Almost certainly the majority are internal promotions.

Manjuuu 4y ago

I wonder if you ever entertained the thought of short tenures being driven by the company environments (hard to find a good fit, a place where you want to stay more than a couple of years) and by some characteristics of the industry as a whole (job hopping=more money). And I'm saying this as someone that has never worked less than 5 years in the same place.