Not OP, but I have a similar track record. Frequent switches because boredom, better pay (especially the first half of my career), and always searching for that amazing moment of confluence where I'm the dumbest guy in the room and working on an incredibly interesting/complex problem. Two years is about right to tackle something important and deliver, and also feel out if there are other opportunities at the current company. It has mostly worked out for me. You get really good at on-boarding yourself and getting up to speed quickly. I sell my labor as being an expert generalist and have professionally worked with half a dozen different languages, numerous different stacks, in a few different industries, and at big, small and in-between sized companies.
I feel like this approach wouldn't be able to make me truly valuable at any larger company for example, which in this case would be the ones considered unhealthy? Because there's enough complexity that takes years to understand. I think as an engineer your ability to provide value climbs in multiples the more you understand the product and what the company itself exactly values, besides the tech. You can solve meaningless problems using tech, but if you understand what is exactly worth solving, this is when your value can skyrocket, especially the larger the company is. Because you will have the understanding of marketing, leadership and product people while having technical capability to know what can be done.
And also I feel like if it's better to switch companies every 2 years because of better pay, it implies that the current company is not actually healthy, because if they were, they would understand the value you provide, you should be able to provide more value at their company rather than starting from scratch in another company.
While I don't feel my current company is healthy, at least I feel like I've been able to climb through promos and compensation faster than if I were to switch every 2 years. I have been there for 6 years.
Maybe you found a great company from the get go, those exist as well !
My pay bumps went something like: 1.5x, 1.5x, 2x, 2x, 1.5x, 1.5x, 2x (note that I changed countries twice so some of the bumps of 2x were also for a more expensive cost of life )
In only one of the companies I stayed more than 2y and was pretty great, I went from senior to senior manager within 4y. Now I’m at 2y again at my current company and am pretty happy, unlikely that I will change again.
The healthy part described by the parent post was along the lines of healthy work environment, not pay. Apart from my current company I’ve never worked somewhere that would give more then 5-10% increases per year, they were more like 0-5
>Because there's enough complexity that takes years to understand. I think as an engineer your ability to provide value climbs in multiples the more you understand the product and what the company itself exactly values, besides the tech. You can solve meaningless problems using tech, but if you understand what is exactly worth solving, this is when your value can skyrocket, especially the larger the company is. Because you will have the understanding of marketing, leadership and product people while having technical capability to know what can be done.
Yes, exactly. I am lucky that I am auto-didactic and grok things quickly. This is what I meant by complex/interesting problems: those are the kinds of problems that management is interested in because those make money. The more skilled management is, the more able they are to recognize those opportunities and allocate skilled labor to make it happen. The friction and need for finding a new company is when you work for under-skilled management that don't.
>And also I feel like if it's better to switch companies every 2 years because of better pay, it implies that the current company is not actually healthy, because if they were, they would understand the value you provide, you should be able to provide more value at their company rather than starting from scratch in another company.
Those companies only deal with the market reality when hiring new. Yes, it would make sense to retain your valuable people and reward them accordingly in an equitable situation, but when your shareholders are pressuring you to reduce labor costs, it is too tempting to give only CoL adjustments in spite of record profit quarters. They bank on retention through other means besides monetary (inertia, "career progression" cult, etc). To them, labor is a resource that is fungible rather than the core pillar of their business. They simply won't value your labor appropriately without negotiation.
Starting from scratch is really only a limitation if you don't ramp up quickly. And that means building social capital and demonstrating clear wins early.
> While I don't feel my current company is healthy, at least I feel like I've been able to climb through promos and compensation faster than if I were to switch every 2 years. I have been there for 6 years.
And how broad or deep has your experience been in those 6 years? Any serious migrations/rewrites/stack changes/scalability challenges/greenfield? Do you really feel you've been challenged professionally in that time? Being on the new hire cusp, especially for new initiatives is where all the action is and what has management's attention and capital expenditure. Being a backfill hire on a feature factory or vendor implementation team is definitely not where growth is going to happen.
And have you accumulated enough wins to make your next interview process easier? Thing is one of the gigs with the most impact in my career was one where I was able to find new opportunities within the org to deliver value, but it was the confluence of smart, motivated people working on interesting/complex things. If you aren't getting that, your 6 years in one place doing the same thing is working against you because all tech ages and decays.
In the beginning of my career I changed jobs quite often for better pay. That gave me a lot of big increases. In one of them I stayed less than 6 months.
