Job hopper here. I used to come to these threads hoping to find comfort for the job hopper in me. Now that a couple years have gone by and I'm OK I think I can

Job hopper here. I used to come to these threads hoping to find comfort for the job hopper in me. Now that a couple years have gone by and I'm OK I think I can provide some comfort to job hoppers. My background: I've been an employed developer for over two years. Over the two years I've gone from cutting my teeth at a start up doing Customer Support and any programming they would let me get my hands on to being considered somewhere in between Mid-level and Senior in my particular environment. During this journey I've been at four different companies for 6 months, 8 months, 4 months, and 6 months. I've always exceeded all goals and contributed in big ways in short periods of time. I'm now a Consultant because I think it is more suited for how I like to work on a lot of different things with different people and I have enough experience and successes to be able to be a consultant (ie. people will pay me for my services). During the interviews for my last two jobs the hiring managers brought up my job history point blank. One even directly called me a job hopper. I didn't shy away from their perception or try to convince them that this time it would be different. While some may see this as sugar coating, I indirectly told them that I am a challenge hopper. I talked about the projects I've worked on and the impact I've had. I talked about the value I've brought to the teams I've been on and what I do to better myself as a programmer. All companies are looking for the good old "V" word - value. Some companies will be more interested in how long you're likely to stick around for. If how long I'm likely to stick around is that important to them then I treat this difference the same way I would anything else that we don't see eye to eye on - I walk away. In the land of software we are lucky to have this affordability because of demand for programmers is high and margins on software can be extremely high. Jump around a little bit and learn a lot. Maybe you'll do that forever. Maybe you'll go do your ownt hing. Maybe you'll settle down. You've got a skill. People want it.