
Ask HN: Three jobs in eight months...am I justified? - tonym9428
Long story short, I&#x27;m a statistician in the automotive industry who has had a colorful history over the past eight months. Here&#x27;s a brief review.<p>a. Laid off from job
b. Started two businesses
c. Got an interesting job offer and accepted it. One month later, I realized that I couldn&#x27;t juggle all three things. Furthermore, my venture was doing fairly well
d. Fast forward five months, and I&#x27;d poured tens of thousands into my two businesses and things had turned for the worse.
e. I accepted the first job offer I had and moved to another state.
f. Another company offered me a job one month into job two, and it seemed better, so I accepted.
g. Have been at job three for one month. It&#x27;s acceptable, even though they mis-characterized the work responsibilities and I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll get much out of this job.
h. Have sent out my resume just to test the waters and have had some great responses.<p>For the future, I won&#x27;t be putting the two one month stints on my resume. But if a company does a background check and finds the job hopping, how do I explain it?<p>So here is my justification for my behavior. I have a degenerative neurological disorder that impact my walking, stability, and will eventually leave me bed ridden. I have about 6 to 10 years until that happens. Due to these circumstances, I have little patience for staying at jobs that I don&#x27;t feel are benefiting me or are as advertised. Look, I&#x27;m trying to cram a fourty year career into about fifteen years.  If a company isn&#x27;t delivering, I&#x27;m going to jump ship. So....am I justified? If I&#x27;m not justified, what can I do to counter-act my job hopping.<p>Also, before to these eight months, I&#x27;ve had two stints at companies for two + years. I&#x27;d also note that if I found a good company, I&#x27;d stay for as long as I&#x27;m able  to
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Eridrus
I would avoid talking about your disorder if I were you; you may feel like it
explains your actions, but no-one else gives a shit. I would just say you felt
like the role was falsely advertised to you, and be prepared to explain the
specifics, people will want to know how big a difference there was that made
you leave, especially considering the fact that some amount of drift is
expected.

Most importantly though, I would ask if you've tried to talk to your
management about the discrepancy and your dissatisfaction. If you haven't,
this seems like a problem to me. No-one wants to work with someone whose first
instinct to be to walk away rather than try and work things out.

Beyond anything else, I feel like the lesson here is to make sure that you
actually want the job you are accepting. Be very specific in what you expect;
if you figure out there is a discrepancy you can walk away before you both get
burned.

Personally, I've started having bringing up what I want much earlier in the
interview process, rather than getting to the end of the whole process to find
there is a mismatch between what I want and the company wants so that we don't
waste each others' time.

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5h
I feel you are justified, but I also suspect you could do yourself a favour by
remembering that the interview process is a two-way street.

Are you asking enough, or good enough questions before accepting offers? For
the right company be up-front about your reason for leaving, as long as both
parties know the role is sufficiently rewarding I doubt you would be classed a
flight risk.

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jerf
I just wanted to make sure this didn't sink into oblivion with no comment. I
suspect that few of us will feel qualified to comment on your situation. I
know I don't. I hope you can find someone who can help you talk your way
through this.

