The conundrum of job employment and seeking

DatabaseHead

I always found this question to be unanswerable.

On one side you have the camp who believes you should never get comfortable and should always be looking, whether it's month 3 or year 3.

The other side believes you should stay put at least 2 - 3 years for the sake of having a solid resume to move forward.

Of course you have different variants of this as well. But generally speaking they fall into these two buckets.

What's your strategy in regards to employment?

You hear horror stories on here about someone getting laid off at month 4 but if they leave at month 4 it's bad on their part. Hardly seems fair most certainly not a rule you should live your life by, or should you? Is this double standard there for a reason?

It's a little slow today and I wanted to toss this out there for some discussion points. It's nice to get a vets perspective and a fresh new take by someone new to the scene.

markulous

Unless the place is just hot garbage, I try to stay there at least a year so I don't look like a job hopper, but that's just a rough timeframe. If the place is furthering my goals then I don't seriously consider anywhere else, but I do stay on top of job descriptions to stay marketable.

If people can justify why they left, then I don't care if it's 4 months or 4 years. But that's just me, unfortunately not all employers feel that way.

cbdudek

Unless the place is toxic, my plan is to be there for about 5 years. If I am going to jump, then it better be a knock your socks off opportunity. So far the shortest I have worked at in my professional career is 5 years and 6 months. As someone who does hiring in IT, I can tell you that employers do look at your tenure with other organizations. If you are doing the same job and jumping from company to another quickly, then some companies will wonder why you are doing that. If you are jumping to a new job that has a better title or more responsibilities, then most companies will understand that.

Phalanx

cbdudek makes a valid point. If the job move shows a valid path of upgrade for your career, not a problem. But I think if people start job hopping without any real focus on the path they're taking, that's when questions start getting asked.

hurricane1091

I've had 4 jobs and have been in the field for less than 4 years. I've never really had a problem with explaining my path. I've quit for career advancement, and no reasonable person has a problem with that.

ITSec14

If I feel projects/initiatives are becoming stagnant for longer than normal periods of time, then I tend to start re-evaluating things. Also, if I'm expected to gain new skill sets, obtain certs, wear a few more hats, etc., then I look for more pay. If my employer can't satisfy my updated market rate based on those things, then that can be a major factor in my decision to seek opportunities elsewhere. Pay isn't everything, but getting a bare minimum merit increase each year when I've accomplished a lot is a hard pill to swallow.

TechGromit

hurricane1091 wrote: »

I've had 4 jobs and have been in the field for less than 4 years. I've never really had a problem with explaining my path. I've quit for career advancement, and no reasonable person has a problem with that.

Job hopping is fine early in your career, but when you get into more senior level positions, companies tend to look for stability.

networker050184

I'd never pass up a good opportunity regardless of how long I've been at a position, but you don't want your resume filled with hopping. No one is going to fault you for moving up, but as cbdudek pointed out, a bunch of lateral short term moves isn't going to sit well with someone looking to fill a role long term. So I guess I'd fall somewhere in the middle.

p@r0tuXus

I've tried to be pragmatic about this but it always leaves a sour taste in my mouth how the double-standard exists. For example: It's okay if you get laid off after Month 4 because it's just business and the business exists to provide profits to it's owners. Without the business you don't have an opportunity to work. However, you leaving after 4 months is frowned upon because then you're an opportunistic job-hopper with no loyalty to the company that took a chance on you and really, what company wants to hire someone they can't securely exploit? I guess the scenario changes, sometimes the employee has the upper hand and their next employer doesn't care about these things or the hiring manager is understanding. Sometimes the company has the upper hand and can screw over this leaving employee by giving them a poor reference. I guess it sucks for the party that doesn't have the upper hand and in a lot of cases, it seems, that's the worker.

Kinet1c

If you've got a clear career path and are progressing towards your goal, then I don't see a problem with it. However, I'd be wary of hiring a candidate who constantly jumps around at the same technical level as opposed to moving upwards. On the flip side, that person would hopefully have picked up some pretty good experience having worked at several employers.

DatabaseHead

Kinet1c wrote: »

If you've got a clear career path and are progressing towards your goal, then I don't see a problem with it. However, I'd be wary of hiring a candidate who constantly jumps around at the same technical level as opposed to moving upwards. On the flip side, that person would hopefully have picked up some pretty good experience having worked at several employers.

Good points made by several contributors.

I agree if you are bouncing from system admin to system admin for example and you are on your 4th effort it can look like the resources has hit their upper limits and can no longer ascend.

I actually did some laterals ~6 years ago, going from contract to contract, 3 months to up to 18 months but that was about it. I locked into a career plan about 5 years back and have been ascending ever since. Consequently this is where I have made my biggest gains.

ITat33

Never get too comfortable

After a solid year, maybe a good idea to look for advance opportunities, although something I have learned is even in your current role you can use that to advance in your own company. Be the change you want to see, and explain why you're changing things..

My career is only 3 years in and I'm at six figures

DatabaseHead

We have 22 year old .net devs making 140,000 base.

If you learn the right skills it's not that hard........

thomas_

I try to shoot for a minimum of 1 year at a place, but if the company is a hot mess then I have no problem jumping ship sooner. I'm of the belief that your compensation, experience, and responsibilities should grow in proportion to each other. If one or more of those starts lagging behind the others significantly, then it might be time to start looking for another job. Unfortunately, it seems like pay is always going to lag behind the most especially as you stay with a company longer. For those reasons it's hard seeing myself staying at a company for more than 1 - 2 years.

As much as I may like working at a company, I'm not willing to provide them with cheap labor for 3, 5, 10 years in the hopes that they are going to advance me if the market rate for my skill set could get me $15 - $20K, or more, elsewhere AND provide me an opportunity where I could gain additional skills to find my next job that provides a $15-$20k increase over that job.

I understand that hiring managers may want people who have a history of staying at places for 4-5 years. I realize it's a hassle to train people and get them up to speed in an environment and hiring managers have a budget for a position they are trying to maintain. However, at the same time I think it's unreasonable to expect people to stay in a position for 4-5 years. I'm not working out of the kindness of my heart, I'm working to get paid and improve my financial situation. I'm not willing to stagnate for 3-5 years compensation or experience wise, just so I don't look like a job hopper on my resume.

ITat33

thomas_ wrote: »

I try to shoot for a minimum of 1 year at a place, but if the company is a hot mess then I have no problem jumping ship sooner. I'm of the belief that your compensation, experience, and responsibilities should grow in proportion to each other.

That can be a problem for some people though

Say you do want to jump ship and its only been a year or less, your next job interview how can you say with good face of why you're leaving your previous role? You can never say what the problem was..

thomas_

If your day to day activities have become monotonous and you aren't gaining any significant new experience a year in and there isn't anything in the pipeline in terms of projects, promotions, etc. to get you new experience, then that's more than enough reason in my mind to start looking for another job.

I'm sure there are plenty of hiring managers that would disagree with me, but those are probably not the people I want to work for anyways. I don't need to get the same 1 year of experience five times over at a company whether it's doing password resets at a help desk or dealing with layer 2 port issues as a net admin.

If you start looking at the 1 year mark you may not find a suitable job until the 1.5 - 2 year mark.

UnixGuy

I've heard it all from employers. Bottom line: Employers don't know what they want. Period.

I've been told "Why did you stay in this company for 5 years why didn't you move?"

and I've also heard "So you stayed in this for 1.5 yrs only, you change jobs too often!"

Yeah okay. Just do your thing, if you're getting paid well and are comfortable and want to stay...do it. If you feel you're not growing or you're sick of the place for whatever reason move.


Keep in mind, ~15 years later or so you can always omit older jobs from your CV and just write 'various roles'....


Fact remains, if a company want to make you redundant, they will. It won't matter you how long you were with them. Period.


Whenever someone ask me why you left, I'll come up with a cool story...without offending anyone and without bad mouthing a previous employer.


TLDR; don't stress, use your judgement. Some people will mind and some won't.

zeitgeist29

markulous wrote: »

Unless the place is just hot garbage, I try to stay there at least a year so I don't look like a job hopper, but that's just a rough timeframe. If the place is furthering my goals then I don't seriously consider anywhere else, but I do stay on top of job descriptions to stay marketable.

If people can justify why they left, then I don't care if it's 4 months or 4 years. But that's just me, unfortunately not all employers feel that way.

I agree with this. I left one job in insurance cause the agent was retiring in 6 months (I had been there 7 months) then my next job I was laid off 6 months later. And people will interview me and hear the story about my "hopping" around and I am still unemployed. I guess getting laid off isn't a valid reason...i dunno.

NetworkingStudent

I was terminated by one of the IT employers I worked at. It was a very toxic environment, and I was glad I left. Anyways, after that job I did a 6 month IT PC refresh project. I excelled in this environment, and I got along with pretty much everyone.

Currently, during my interviews..
No one questions me leaving the project, once I say" It was a 6 month project..."

However, when they ask about the job I was terminated from it never seems like a good conversation. I have crafted an answer as to why I was terminated. I try to avoid this subject the best I can. Also, when it comes up on job application, and I explain why I was terminated, I never hear back from the employer.

Everyone gets terminated or laid off at least once in their life, and I feel they should be given a chance to interview for a job just like everyone else

UnixGuy

NetworkingStudent wrote: »

....
However, when they ask about the job I was terminated from it never seems like a good conversation. I have crafted an answer as to why I was terminated. I try to avoid this subject the best I can. Also, when it comes up on job application, and I explain why I was terminated, I never hear back from the employer.

Everyone gets terminated or laid off at least once in their life, and I feel they should be given a chance to interview for a job just like everyone else

Employers have so many candidates to choose from so they would rather go with the safe option of someone who wasn't terminated. I don't blame them but I'm on your side.

Maybe you can take that job completely off your CV 5 years later...something to consider.