
Ask HN: How much job hopping is acceptable? - romanhn
Hiring managers - what constitutes too much job hopping for you to pass on a resume?<p>Everyone else - do you have a lower or an upper limit on how long you tend to stay with companies?<p>As the former, my personal rule of thumb is to look for at least one recent tenure of 2+ years for someone with 5+ years of experience. More allowance is made for candidates with less experience, but again - 4 one-year tenures is a red flag.<p>I do see a trend for shorter tenures in the last couple of years, presumably due to the competitive market, so am curious where you stand as either a hiring manager or a potential job seeker.
======
jbob2000
I think for software development, it takes about a year to get fully up to
speed on a company's development practices and processes. So after a year,
most people will ask themselves, "is this the company I want to stay with for
a while?" and leave or stay for a few more years.

Under 1 year, I have to think that something out of the ordinary happened and
I would be inclined to ask about what happened. Did the company go under? Were
there some crazy red flags that forced you to leave? And internally, I'd ask
myself, is this person really picky? Do they have some red flag that keeps
getting them let go? Etc.

I don't have an upper limit, but definitely a lower limit; 2 years. 1 year to
get up to speed, 1 year to give the company a chance. I recognize that all
companies have problems and I want to see progress being made on solving those
problems. If, after 2 years, we're still talking about the same issues we
faced when I started, then I'm going to start looking.

Curious why someone would place an upper limit on time served? If the work is
good and the company is good, why leave?

~~~
burrox
What if the reason why that person left had nothing to do with the work
environment?

Right now I'm a bit worried about leaving my current job (10 months in)
because I have the opportunity to go backpacking through South America with a
friend, which I honestly believe is not something that comes up very often.

Anyways I was just wondering how a manager might react to my situation once I
come back and start looking for a job again. Could it impact my professional
profile in a negative way?

~~~
delphinius81
I think that's one of the problems with traditional resumes/CVs. They focus on
work experiences, and not the entirety of your experiences - work/social/etc.

Because here is what leaving a job to go backpacking tells me: You are willing
to take risks when the opportunities present themselves. The unknown (will I
find a job later) doesn't scare you. You value learning about other
places/cultures, which will give you perspectives other people might not get
(let's be real, 2 weeks in a resort hotel on vacation does not teach you about
another country's culture).

If you can honestly translate your backpacking experience into qualities that
a company would look for, you'll have no problem. In fact, you should probably
explain that in your cover letter to potential employers anyway.

~~~
burrox
Thanks! those are very encouraging words.

Well honestly I am a _bit_ scared about the job situation when I come back but
I do think that I have more to gain by going on a backpacking experience at
this time of my life than staying another 6 months / 1 year at my current job
as a developer..

Web dev moves really fast though! hopefully it won't be crazy different when I
get back.

~~~
Silhouette
Remember that hardly anyone's last words on their death bed are "I wish I had
spent more time at work." You're young and early in your career. You have many
professional opportunities ahead of you no matter what you choose here.

On the other hand, personal opportunities like this don't come along very
often. I've known a few friends and family do something big like this in their
20s, and without exception they have had amazing experiences and no serious
regrets in the long term, even if settling back in when they first came home
wasn't entirely easy.

Only you can weigh up the pros and cons in your personal situation, but as
long as you're being financially sensible and you're not damaging your current
employer unreasonably by leaving so soon, I think it is extremely unlikely
that you'll do any serious or permanent damage to your career if you decide to
go.

By the way, web dev doesn't really move very fast. If you stick with it as a
career then some time over the next 10-20 years you'll come to realise that
the fundamentals actually evolve very slowly. The illusion of rapid change is
mostly perpetuated by blogs and online forums and conferences that always want
the next big thing to talk about, but they're mostly just talking about
superficial things like which tool or framework to use. If you decide to go
then nothing that really matters in web dev is going to have shifted so far in
a few months that you can't catch up very quickly when you get back.

------
antoniuschan99
I have been contracting for the last two years and have been doing ~3-6 month
contracts so my answer might be a little different.

Whatever the stack I get up to speed usually after 1 week and provide value to
the company pretty much immediately (it's always scary starting a new project
because I feel like I need to prove myself within the first few days since I'm
working with a new team).

If it's a normal job, I think 1.5 years should be a good amount since that is
apparently the median for how long developers stay at a company nowadays.

I think the mentality that a hiring manager won't hire someone because he's
afraid someone will leave after 6 months is old school. People are going to
leave, but you need to figure out how to get the most value out of your
developers while they are there. Also, if it takes you that long to get
someone up to speed it's either that developer is too slow or there's someone
wrong with your process.

Ultimately I see the pros of job hopping (early on in your career at least)
because you will have worked with so many different people. Your gauge in
people's personalities and experience will be a useful asset. Plus you will
get to know a lot of people in the industry.

~~~
fweespeech
> I have been contracting for the last two years and have been doing ~3-6
> month contracts so my answer might be a little different.

Tbh, I lump all these together under "Self Employed" on my resume.

I personally think anything 1099 / short-term contracts should be considered 1
employer (you).

I wouldn't call contract work "job hopping" since the employer is really
yourself and you are simply working on a series of 3-6 month projects.

~~~
cloudjacker
the problem is that most people that proclaim self employed are actually
unemployed, which is less marketable in corporate culture.

so to differentiate yourself, write the project and client details

~~~
fweespeech
I think you are confusing what I mean. The details are there but at a quick
skim it doesn't look like you job hopped. And lets be honest, no one does more
than a quick skim of a resume until they've decided to talk to you.

I'd bet you a large % of the people that toss out resumes for "job hopping"
skim a heading-per-contract-from-Y-to-Y format and toss your resume without
sorting out the details.

 _Self Employed YYYY to YYYY_

* Contract A

* Contract B

* Contract Farming Agency (which gave me N projects)

 _Corporate Titan YYYY to YYYY_

* Project A

* Project B

~~~
antoniuschan99
Hrmm, looks like a good way to do it :)

~~~
fweespeech
Yeah I started doing it when people asked me questions in phone screens about
why I left Job X after 3 months. It is why I'm convinced people just skim
resumes until they think they'll bring you onsite.

------
throwaway1979
I don't see a big deal with 1 year tenures. Under 1 (3-4 months seems
suspicious). I imagine people leave after 1 year if they took a job that
wasn't a nice place but they had some incentives requiring them to stay a year
(sign on bonuses are typically vested at 1 year; moving assistance also needs
to be paid back if an employee leaves within a year).

So ... if a person leaves at the 1 year mark, it was likely they who chose to
leave. Given the stories about bad employers in tech and the fact that there
are many good employers too these days, I would say good for the moving
employee!

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's really odd. My current startup didn't question my job history of only
staying at companies for under 2-3 years (~15 years experience total), but
when I interviewed at Deluxe Corp to manage one of their hosting acquisitions,
I was questioned quite a bit about it. Their internal recruiter even asked me
to justify the short duration at each org.

"How do we know you'll stay with us for more than 2-3 years?"

"You don't without a contract."

(I did not accept the offer)

YMMV.

~~~
pklausler
"You pay me enough that I can't get a better offer."

------
ShakataGaNai
Ask first. Please, please, please. If you are a hiring manager ask the
candidate about their job history before you dismiss them entirely on their
job history.

I had two slighty-more-than-a-year stints in a row and I know some people who
it caused concern for. What was the reason? One was a contract with a non-
profit that didn't have the budget to continue and the second was a failing
startup that was downsizing. Both perfectly logical and understandable.
Fortunately my next boss-to-be asked first.

I've also seen people who love small startups, they get in on the ground floor
and stay for 18months before they move on. They did an amazing job and I
wouldn't hesitate to hire them on even if I knew it was only for 18 months.
(oh, then they found an amazing startup and stayed for ~4 years)

At the end of the day there are way too many variables. As a hiring manager
myself I've seen and heard it all. So don't make assumptions. Don't guess.
Interview them as normal and ask the pertinent questions about their history.

~~~
romanhn
I have seen a couple of candidates include short reasons for why they have a
couple of short stints ("mass layoffs after acquisition", "group disbanded") -
this really served well to allay any concerns I may have had.

------
apocalyptic0n3
When I am looking at resumes, I generally hope to see at least some stability.
If someone has had 10 jobs in 4 years (which I would say is about 1/4 of all
resumes I read), it makes me think there is something wrong with the employee,
not the employer.

Another red flag I look for is when someone has freelancing on their resume
and they will basically have this:

Freelancing, Inc. 2005-Present

Company A July 2014-September 2015

Company B December 2012-August 2013

Company C January 2011 - March 2012

You get the pattern. While those people generally end up spending more than a
year with the company, they always quit and go back to "freelancing". I've
spoken with some people about it in the past and it seems semi-common for
freelancers to work full time for a company, save up as much as possible, then
leave and skate through their savings and the odd freelancing job for a year
or two, and repeating. That's generally not what we are looking for

So for someone with more than a few years of experience, I generally like to
see at least one job in the last 5 years where they lasted 2 years.

~~~
jackson23
I see your points. As a [freelance] Consultant, my resume has over 40 over-
lapping, yet relatively short duration (2-6 months) positions listed. As a
Farm/Server Architect and Admin for very specific technologies like SharePoint
Server, MS Project Server, O365 SharePoint Online/Project Online, I typically
Architect the server farm(s), install and configure the servers (automated as
much as possible) and turn over the keys. Every day a recruiter calls or a
client questions me about the short durations, I simply say "How long did you
keep your Architect around after your house was built?" Very few companies
need a relatively expensive Architect full-time...which suits me because I've
had exposure to so many problem sets, environments, company cultures, great
people [mostly].

At many companies I meet some IT folks that have worked at their company for
15+ years. They are typically the ones that need the most help as they have
mostly only had exposure to _their_ problem sets and methodologies. New tech,
in some cases, scares the heck out of them. The younger ones seem more eager
for the change(s)...but c'est la vie.

~~~
stevenwiles
You list 40 positions on your resume?

~~~
jackson23
>You list 40 positions on your resume?

On one version. I also have a standard one-pager, a 6-pager, and a 12-pager
resume for those HR/recruiters looking for depth + breadth experience. Per one
'job board', I actually get about 30% more contracts from my 12-pager than the
other two versions combined: keywords and keyword density I am sure.

I have a 2-pager "Contracts" list that just lists companies, dates, position,
and a 1-2 sentence blurb about each...and this is just for SharePoint/MS
Project/O365 contracts since 2008...not even my whole career, nor oddball
stuff [Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management Config: WTF?, Clarity PM Development,
custom map software, etc.], nor short <30 day issues if the client wasn't
"notable".

I have seen other Consultants with significantly more experience than me that
have multiple pages just for publications, books, courses taught, etc. and/or
patents on their resume. Due to the enterprise market that SharePoint once
exclusively targeted, most of my clients are large Fortune 500/1000 companies
and listing the numerous ones I have worked with has not been a noticeable, or
even real, detriment.

My line of thought: "Would $hiringManager hire someone that only worked at 2
or 3 places [no gaps though!] to solve this problem, or would $hiringManager
hire the consultant that has blasted problems away at over 40 notable
companies, wrote/taught courses on x, wrote the book on x, etc." My gaps are
[invisibly: not listed] filled with 'smaller' work/contracts, that if listed,
would multiply my resume's page count by some factor of ridiculous and, to
some uninitiated, dilute my value. First world problems.

I do see that Architect/Administrator work for on-premise SharePoint/Project
is declining while more SMBs are buying into Office 365/SharePoint
Online/Project Online. Yet, just today, no less than 3 contracts/RFQs came in
for on-prem SP2013 to SP2016 migrations. One contract I cannot take because it
is in NYC and for a City government migration (not top fees and typically
difficult to work with, and too far away); a largish Seattle company (~7B
revenue FY15) that is qualified and has an interesting business and
requirements; and a consulting company in Hollywood that needs someone
'yesterday' to fix/correct workflows in their large studio client's workflow
manager farm prior to the SP2016 migration.

I digressed.

------
pklausler
If the answer to "why'd you leave that job so soon after starting?" was "The
next company called me up and offered me a deal that was so much better that
I'd be stupid to not take it," then that's totally fine and is in fact a good
sign.

~~~
noxxten
Mostly. Employers could also become afraid you'll walk away from them too.

~~~
Sorry_Rum_Ham
They should be.

They'd have no issue cutting you loose at the drop of a hat if layoffs were
happening, so why should they expect any sort of company loyalty from you?

~~~
pklausler
35 years ago, an older coworker at UNIVAC told me that the company gave us its
best job offer every other Friday in the form of a pay stub, and other
companies were always welcome to beat it. It turned out to be good advice.

At my next job, another older and even grumpier coworker told me "face it,
we're all whores."

------
fma
I'd prefer if someone joins my team that they show they will stay on my team.
I don't want to spend my time getting them up to speed and have them leave in
6 months. I'd rather have an above average developer for a few years than a
rockstar for 6 months...because you'll be wasting my time and everyone else's
on my team.

If I have context why you're job hopping then I'll take it into consideration.
There are legitimate reasons to leave in a few months. However, if you've
never been at a place or project for more than a year, I can safely assume you
never had to support an application much in production because by the time you
were knowledgeable enough to do so, you left.

~~~
mikestew
_I 'd prefer if someone joins my team that they show they will stay on my
team._

I'd prefer that, too. Then I get in there and found you _vastly_ under-
represented the amount of technical debt you have, I find out that the reason
there's no CI isn't because you didn't have anyone to set up a server and tie
it to SCM, it's because your devs are lazy and management is too soft to push
it. The build is up to 1200 warnings now, so the odds of there are _ever_
being a clean build are zero. The team I now manage has people that were
grandfathered in from an extremely low bar and now I can't get rid of them no
matter how much they drag the rest of the team down.

I wish there were only one place like that on my resume, but I'm a slow
learner. Hopefully I've learned enough by now to break out of the control
statement before getting to shittyCompaniesOnResumeCount++.

~~~
Huppie
Oh man, I can't even describe how much this hits home.

I've had something like this happen twice now, where the people in the job
interview misrepresent the actual reasons for e.g. technical debt or in
general are just not honest about their priorities.

I'm now spending a lot more time grilling companies on their development
practices and priorities during job interviews. Not all companies are happy
with that :)

------
snockerton
Looking at tenure in isolation of any other context is meaningless. I've
interviewed candidates with multiple 6-12 month positions on their resume that
turned out to be great contributors, and other folks with 5-10 year positions
that were horrible.

------
soulnothing
I've been very curious about this as well. For financial reasons I have needed
to do contract over the past 2 years. Primarily doing 6 months stints, some
were outlined as a year but that fell through. The problem I've had is that
mid way through my contract the project is canceled.

This has become a really big issue as when I look my "stability" is bought to
light consistently. My first two roles were 2.5 years, and 1.5 years
respectively. Both times I left on good terms. So I can commit, and will if
given the oppurtunity too, and room to grow. My contracts have just been
largely proof of concepts, that were shelved.

The thing is I'm tired of jumping, worrying how long my contract is going to
last. That I need to keep going looking for the next thing, because either the
contract will run out or I stagnate. This is also leading to a counter point
and negative when I look. I've not been able to ship any projects to
production. I feel at this point I'm stuck in a contracting loop, and I'm not
sure how to get out.

------
dbrower
A reasonable career trajectory is something like doubling the time at each
place until you hit the 8-10 year mark, modulo uncontrollable events, like a
place shutting down.

When you have someone who's been repeatedly changing employers every 12-18
months for a while with no mitigating factors, you begin to wonder about
ability to commit.

It may matter less if your are in a field where things are done in sprints,
the person is likely to be instantly productive, and there isn't a lot of
complexity to absorb.

There are people who have the temperament to be short to mid-term contractors,
and who don't like to be and wouldn't be good long-term hires.

------
ecesena
It depends if the candidate is applying or you're sourcing her. I generally
don't skip based on the very last job, because even if it's 3mo there may be a
reason that is worth investigating in an info interview.

But in general, I skip if the pattern seems to be hopping every year in the
last 2-3 years.

Another thing that I look at is where geographically the candidate was
working. If I see no hopping for a while, then moved to Silicon Valley and
started hopping every year, then I pass, or at least I yellow flag that in the
pipeline.

I don't have any issue with several years in just a company, actually I think
it's rare and very positive.

------
davio
I'm a hiring manager and I don't really care about short tenures. I think
recent grads are doing themselves a disservice if they aren't moving every
year or so for the first 5 years.

------
xutopia
My average is roughly 1 year at every position with the maximum being nearly 2
years.

I prefer working in startups and smaller businesses rather than a bank or
government entity. In the startup world I found 1-2 year stints don't seem
like a bad thing. In the conservative banking world it could be.

------
nilkn
I don't mind multiple short tenures in general, but that doesn't mean that
they can't be a negative. If you've never stuck at a job longer than a year,
then that means you've never had to support your own code and infrastructure
at all except perhaps immediately after it was hot off the press. That's
pretty critical experience, and if you don't have that experience, I will
notice that and take it into consideration when it comes to how much seniority
and pay you expect.

Speaking of seniority, it's very hard to hire someone into a senior or
leadership position if they've never stuck around at a job long enough to
actually develop any seniority. It's impossible to develop management skills
if you're quitting your job every 12 months. Even at every 24 months you're
really limiting your ability to get some truly solid management experience
under your belt.

All that said, having long tenures on your resume obviously doesn't guarantee
anything. A week or two ago I interviewed someone with 15 years at the same
company and the title of Chief Architect who seriously struggled with a
simplified version of FizzBuzz.

The bottom line is that I try to keep an open mind about everyone, and if I
have concerns over the lengths of previous jobs I'll always give the candidate
the opportunity to explain their viewpoint. Usually I can be convinced and won
over.

------
logfromblammo
It depends on who initiated the breakup, and why. If a person got fired or
laid off, that person might not have had any control over it. If the employee
resigned, I'd be wary of any duration shorter than 18 months.

It might be that long before seeing your first "annual" pay increase. It is
very common for me to see the crap raise that I got for the year and send out
resumes to check on competitive offers, to see if I could do better.

It is also long enough to see a company on its worst behavior, and decide that
enough is enough. I personally go two years with a merely bad--but not awful--
company, to see if I can jump-start any improvements. After that, I send out
resumes, and jump ship as soon as it is feasible.

But I'd also see that as an indicator of the quality of companies these days.
I have only worked at two companies (out of 8 jobs) where I would have been
happy to stay there indefinitely. They both got bought out, and the new owners
laid me off without regard to my individual value.

I have always been "at will", so if you're going to question my durance at
previous companies, I'm going to question your commitment to all your
employees that have no contracts. That door swings both ways. If you're
looking too closely at that, I might think you're trying to weed out
candidates that are too sensitive to the corporate bullshit that may be
driving your existing turnover rate, in which case, I might get spooked and
either withdraw or demand a higher offer from the start.

------
itsdrewmiller
There are two types of red flags that can come out of frequent job changes:

1\. Several <1 year tenures - this person gets fired a lot

2\. Exclusively 1-2 year tenures - This person is trying to jump around to
maximize salary (and isn't able to convince their current employer to
match/exceed an offer)

For #1 job history is usually not the only indication that this will be a
problem. Depending on how many open positions you have they might make a
screen, with the vast majority washing out there. "It was contract work" is
usually a flag, and being at startups that went under is a mitigating factor.

#2 is somewhat more risky as a hiring manager - more expensive to interview
because they are less likely to flame out early in the process, but then much
more likely to not be able to agree on an acceptable offer. Overall these
folks are still going to be net positive contributors over their tenure, but
there is opportunity cost in missing out on hiring someone who would kick ass
over 5+ years at your company. It's hard to definitively pin someone down as
this category outside of 4+ jobs never going more than 2 years. If they are
coming through a recruiter that's a flag, and if they have moved cities that's
somewhat of a mitigating factor.

Seeing someone who stayed at the same company for 4+ years and got one or more
promotions there is a big plus on resumes.

There is not a lot of research into any of this stuff AFAIK, so this is
basically all just my opinion. What I have seen basically says that people are
pretty bad and inconsistent at evaluating resumes:

[http://blog.alinelerner.com/resumes-suck-heres-the-
data/](http://blog.alinelerner.com/resumes-suck-heres-the-data/)

~~~
st3v3r
"2\. Exclusively 1-2 year tenures - This person is trying to jump around to
maximize salary (and isn't able to convince their current employer to
match/exceed an offer)"

Isn't the conventional wisdom that, even if you are able to convince your
current employer to match, that you shouldn't take their offer? Most employers
have already decided you're "not loyal", and as such will be looking to get
rid of you.

~~~
smileysteve
> Isn't the conventional wisdom that, even if you are able to convince your
> current employer to match, that you shouldn't take their offer? Most
> employers have already decided you're "not loyal", and as such will be
> looking to get rid of you.

You can frame it 2 different ways:

* I have an offer that if you don't beat, I'll leave

* I've been considering my market value, like working here, and would like you to recognize what I add to the business.

The 2nd way allows an employer to pay you more - and the employee to stay
there because they didn't see themselves in the other rule.

------
cauterized
Hiring is exhausting and expensive and eats a ridiculous amount of my team's
time, not to mention onboarding and learning curve. It's not worth my while to
hire someone who I think has a <50% chance of staying at least two years.

That doesn't mean every bullet on your resume needs to be 2 years long, but if
you're at least a handful of years into your career, you should have at least
one.

And yeah, if you're working for startups and they keep going under, that
sucks. But maybe it suggests that you could stand to learn a bit more about
the business end of things and improve your ability to evaluate an employer's
prospects.

------
dsfyu404ed
It's goanna depend a lot on exactly what industry niche you specialize in and
what you specialize in below that. As long as the details have a semi-obvious
non-negative explanation it shouldn't be a problem.

Employees are like expensive, specialized tooling. The more specialized and
refined your skill set is then the more acceptable job hopping becomes. If
you're the kind of person that's brought in as a subject matter expert to help
do something your experience may not be relevant and you may be, expensive,
under utilized and dissatisfied when there's no more work for you. To continue
the tooling analogy, if a company buys specialized equipment for a contract
job it's usually sold afterward. This is why highway plowing and bridge
building equipment is all ancient and has had half a million owners. A
contract is won, (used) equipment is bought, maintenance (or modification for
the specific task is performed), the work is done, someone else wins the
contract, the equipment is put up for sale and the cycle continues. It takes
resources to keep specialized equipment or specialized employees around and
functional (pay/maintenance) and it's not efficient to have it sit around
mostly unused (making a senior dev chase bugs). However, if you're switching
jobs in less time than a typical project takes you're gonna come under the
same scrutiny as the crane that's up for sale while the rest of the fleet is
building bridges, "what's wrong with this one?" If you're not sticking around
for about as long as it takes to complete on project then it's gonna draw
scrutiny.

If you're resume looks like you're job hopping and moving up it's likely going
to be looked upon neutrally or favorably (i.e. "nobody can keep this guy
because everyone else has more important/lucrative stuff for him to do").

Job hopping is definitely within the range of normal for the vast majority of
the industries people on HN work in so unless your resume practically says you
can't hold a job then it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not going to put a number on "job hopping" because it's dependent on
industry, specialization, region, training time and probably a bunch of other
things" What's short for someone developing control software for radar systems
in Boston is likely an eternity for a JavaScript dev specializing in UI in SV.

------
brador
Stop waiting until you lose a job to find a new one.

Upgrade regularly, as soon as you find a new job that you like more go take
it. Building your skills and Networking are key. Network all the time, get to
know people who will be hiring, conferences, events, find people who are
working on things you want to work on and people you want to work with.

Lifes too short to wait it out.

Upgrade fast and regularly, pay shoots up, location improves.

------
benjohnson
If someone bails on a pressure-cooker job - I view it as a sign on wisdom.

------
Silhouette
(I'm not a dedicated hiring manager, but have been involved in my share of
hiring decisions over the years.)

I don't really believe in hard and fast rules with recruiting. There are
usually too many variables for arbitrary limits to be helpful, and I've seen
plenty of good hires with unusual resumes. The important questions are:

1\. Is the person you're looking at likely to be an overall benefit if you
hire them for the position?

2\. Is anyone else who is applying likely to bring more overall benefit?

There are three concerns I usually have with a resume full of short-term gigs.

Firstly, someone who has never stuck around long enough to deal with the
consequences of their own decisions or who has no real understanding of issues
like technical debt is a huge liability above entry-level positions. If
someone is applying for a senior developer role and I don't see evidence of
knowing how to maintain software long-term from their employment history,
there would need to be something else in the resume to make up for that or
it's basically an instant no-hire.

Secondly, the equivalent for more junior positions is that someone moving jobs
every few months may not be gaining useful basic skills and developing sound
professional judgement as effectively as their time served might otherwise
suggest. There's an old joke about someone with ten years of experience and
someone with the same year of experience ten times. The latter is probably a
no-hire.

Finally, there is always some cost and some disruption associated with hiring
a new member of staff. Someone whose pattern of previous moves suggests
they're just trying to climb a ladder as fast as possible without necessarily
contributing much value in each step along the way is a no-hire. Just as
important, even someone who looks like they'll probably stick around for a
year and generate some real value after a few months ramping up is still going
to be a much less attractive candidate than someone who usually sticks around
for say two or three years.

------
UK-AL
Hiring managers ignoring the fact that best way to increase salary is to move.
That's why people move a lot. Nothing to do with skill

It's because your not paying employees the market rate so they leave.

Nothing to do with skill of the employee.

They just want to get away with paying below rate salaries.

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acjohnson55
I'm for more concerned with seeing a record of accomplishment and career
progression. If someone is only staying at companies for a year, but they're
shipping work through the whole product cycle, I don't have a problem there.
However, if they're leaving things undone as they bounce from place to place
and not showing experience with the pre-launch, launch, maintenance, and re-
launch phases of a major project, that's problematic.

On the other hand, if someone stayed at one place for 5 years and doesn't have
a lot of progress they can point to, I'd be somewhat concerned about their
trajectory in their field.

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Gustomaximus
A good rule of thumb is 3 jobs in 10 years. Other factors like
contracting/projects etc matter. This could shift to 4 jobs these days as
people tend to move about faster.

Upper limits depends on company and movement within the company. 10 years in a
company with good reputation isnt a problem. 10 years in a staid government
department with no movement wouldn't likely represent a go-getter.

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tedmiston
I know the stat for average employee duration at a startup is about 9 months,
excluding founders I believe.

Personally I think I would ask more details of an engineer who stayed with a
company 6 months or less but I wouldn't necessarily be suspicious. Anything
beyond 12 months, I wouldn't ask at all.

------
lj3
It doesn't matter. If you have the exact experience and expertise they're
looking for, they'll overlook everything else. Otherwise, they'll use anything
as an excuse to reject your resume.

------
tedmiston
Re: the trend of shorter tenures - In tech, especially startups, switching
companies is still considered the best way for an engineer to get a good
raise.

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thefastlane
if you're hot, you're hot. tenure doesn't matter anymore.

~~~
gerbal
If you have a bunch of 1-6 month jobs on your resume your going to get passed
over as unreliable and not worth the expense of hiring unless you are one hell
of a rockstar.

~~~
Silhouette
If someone has nothing but a bunch of 1-6 month jobs on their resume without
mitigating circumstances, they _are_ unreliable and they _are not_ a rock
star.

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cloudjacker
Minimum 1 year

Maximum 2 year

1 year for some equity and to judge if I even want it, 2 year solely so hiring
managers don't disqualify me (along with random employees that anecdotally
heard what red flags).

And I remove all the 3 month stints off my resume

And I also take off contracts done in chronologically parallel time periods
because they confuse people that are silently judging how long I had been
anywhere, than any other merit

Easier to get an experienced based salary upgrade at a different company, than
at the current company.

Another quirk seems to be that everyone in engineering seems to _like_ seeing
gaps. So disappearing my 3 month stints has an added effect that would be
counterintuitive to all the unemployed bloggers writing resume tips on ask.com

It is an adaptation. Get money.

