Slashdot Mirror
Is Switching Jobs Too Often a Bad Thing?
Career Hot Potato asks: "I've been out of school for little more than a year and I have only good things to say about the job market. So far, there doesn't seem to be any lack of demand for a good .NET developer. I've got to admit, though, I feel a little disloyal at this point. Several great job offers have come my way and I've taken them. My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me. Until now I've just chalked it up to 'I'm just settling in,' but now another opportunity has been dropped into my lap. Would I be digging my own grave by taking this job? It'd be my fourth job in 16 months but each offered a promotion and a 30% to 40% raise. I know better than to put a price on job satisfaction but I'm pretty certain I'd be happy there. Is being branded as a 'hot potato' enough to keep you from switching? What's your price on this stigma?"
The way I see it, if you end up getting a job you are pretty much set. The only thing it could hurt is your ability to GET a job, not KEEP it. As long as you are happy with the latest offer and stick with it you should be able to put in enough time to get passed the whole 'hot potato' phase before you need to look for another. Go with what will make you happy while making the most money =P
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. --- Voltaire
I've got a book here by Gordon Miller, called Quit Your Job Often and Get Big Raises.
Switching jobs regularly can be fantastic for your career - but you have to do it intelligently: leave AFTER you finish a big project.
(disclaimer: I'm a contractor - it's a whole other way of making a living.)
"Be afraid to die until you have won some victory for humanity" -Horace Mann
You can do it once but your resume should have a job that spans several years right after it. That way you can lie about the short job and get away with it.
Hmmmmmn, I'm not so sure, while a job change every four months is a little much, while the offers keep flowing in (ie, he's not actively job hunting), no problem.
As far as resumes go, who cares, fluff it out. Drop off the the job who'll give you the worst references/referee & extend the other jobs in a month, with a two month 'sabbatical'* in the middle.
Switching jobs can be bad, but if you're being offered jobs, basically, don't stress about it. Take the job if you think its better (pay, stability, working environemnt, proximity to home, etc).
* When you're asked about your sabbatical in your interview, say you wanted time to learn $.Net_related_thing and had enough saving to take some time off.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
As far as I can tell, the closer to the CEO end of the hierarchy you are, the less of a stigma is attached to it. If you've taken six different busboy jobs in a year, you're fucked. Six senior management positions in a year, you're just ambitious.
If you're getting offers of 30-40% higher and taking them, as an employer I don't think I'd blame you for hopping.
The problem is going to be this: You're costing your employers money every time you do this. Lots and lots of money. It costs money to go through the hiring process, the process of orienting you (during which time you are less productive and still getting paid), the process of processing you (HR setting up payroll, insurance, etc), and worst of all -- the opportunity cost of hiring someone who leaves in a couple of months (ie, loss of productivity due to your orientation time + hiring time of the next guy + orientation time of the next guy).
Unless you are extraordinarily compelling, I'd be inclined to pass on you as an employer unless I was sure there was something I could do to keep you should you get a better offer -- and I'd have to be willing to do it, too.
Mostly, when you make a habit of hopping, what you need to consider before you hop is:
1. If the new job turns sour, am I willing to put up with any shit they give me, no matter how bad it is.
2. Is the company going to be in a position to release me in the near future (ie, due to layoffs or because I'm a fuck up)
The reason you need to consider these is because with each hop you make in a short amount of time, the danger of the aforementioned hiring manager passing on you due to your hopping increases. You do NOT want to be without a job when you cross the line and become a radioactive hire due to job hopping.
Something you don't learn in school is that every single company has a single laser-pointed focus: to get the most out of you for the lowest possible salary. This is how it works in good companies and in bad companies.
Something you don't learn in school is that every single employee needs a single laser-pointed focus: to get the most out of the company for the lowest investment of your time. This is how it works in good employees and in bad employees.
Eventually your salary will approach "fair market value" and you won't see massive salary increases, that is called the ceiling. When you hit the ceiling you will focus more on "quality of life" concerns.
Good luck!
Dear CHP: You don't really have enough all 'round experience in the 'real world' to ask or even understand such a question. You seem to have no concept of loyalty to an employer, etc. If this was related to being placed by an agency...one agency that you've been with since you left school...I might buy it. Otherwise, you're much too green to be trusted to stick around long enough for you or the employer to really know if you should go or stay.
:)
If I were a recruiter and knew about such moves, I'd be suspicious, regardless of your explanation(s). It sounds more like you've been dismissed after every 90 day probation for the last four hirings.
Also, don't ignore how this will look on credit reports as well - to banks and potential employers. Employers frequently check those these days, so try as you might to gloss over within a resume and you're more likely to just be putting your neck in a noose. Pick a job and stay with it for at least a year. Get more experience out in the world and use that to help pick the job you think you want...later. Otherwise, work for an agency and do your hopping while still showing one employer.
You can always do what most people in the same position do... start your own business and you can change once a week if you like
If you're being offered jobs then your new employer is fine with the amount of job-hopping you're doing. If you're not, then you're stuck in your current one until your CV looks better. In either case, you don't need to worry about anything - except for taking a job that you hate, in case you get stuck there.
My Journal
I've been living at my parents house for 3 years without a job, mainly due to burn-out and minor issues in completing my degree. Basically I was missing one elective, a non-major class, for 2 years.
I'm a good programmer, with mainly C and Java experience. I've got lots of PC hardware/networking/IT experience going back to DOS 3.1, can find my way around most any OS, and can do network management, unlike most other CS graduates. I feel like the breadth of my experience could be valuable.
I also started a software dev company in college and scored a contract with a large publisher which didn't net me much money, but forced me to step up and code a big project in C, from design, to implementation, to playing a support role. I worked on the website too, doing PHP, database work, and shopping cart integration with our credit card processor. I did have help, but was the go-to guy for technical understanding in our tiny operation.
Since then I haven't done much, and it is approaching a year since I finally finished my Comp. Sci. degree. How do I explain the 3 year gap where I did basically nothing? My record at past jobs has been very good, and my fellow employees/bosses found me valuable, but those references are now getting pretty outdated, being almost 5 years ago.
I'm not sure where to go from here, despite my past success, the 3 year work gap immediately following screams "unreliable". I've thought about doing independent consulting for small businesses to get back into the groove of things, but doing your own thing is a lot of responsibility, and it takes time to develop a viable income stream this way. Conventional employment would provide a softer start and immediate income that would allow me to be independent of my parents, which I sorely need.
My parents would like to see me get a high paying job, but coming from a different culture, never really fancied the idea of me being truly independent. It is very easy to get stuck in a rut living at home, and on top of that I've always had some difficulty staying organized and managing my time. I've been trying to complete a ruby on rails web project for a non-profit that is months overdue, and it is difficult to work from here. A conventional job would provide the structure and change of environment that I need.
Anyway, I digress. Going back to the original topic, I'm a bit stuck here, how should I approach the 3 year gap in my record when queried by a potential employer?
Well, I'm really sad to say it, but there's no such thing as loyalty. Or, let me rephrase that; there is such thing as loyalty, but your company expects a lot more of it from you then it plans to show you in return. This is true in (the made up statistic) of 99% of all businesses, large, medium, and even many small busineses. You're much more likely to be treated like a loyal employee at a small company, of course.
Still, in this case, being a young buck (I'm not, but if I was), I'd jump on the highest salary I could get, as long as the new location made it worth while. But ultimately, the job you settle in needs to meet a lot more than financial requirements. I wanted to work in the entertainment industry, having studied graphics, but I hated the west coast. I got a job a production facility on the East Coast which not only was more to my liking, but closer to my family. Moreover, while I am making less money, the amount I'm making relative to cost of living is actually more.
There are benefits to longevity at many companies, too; I'll bet the guy who posted this question hasn't even been covered by health insurance for more than a few weeks at a time. Most companies don't start matching retirement funds until you've been with them for a year or so. At my company, after 5 years you get another week of vacation. After 10 you get another week. I get nearly twice as much vacation time as someone starting out in this company, more if you separate PTO into what would otherwise be separate vacation and sick days.
Still, I'd give up a week for a 30% increase in pay. I'm pretty miserly with my PTO and usually have a couple of weeks at the end of the year. If I only had one, it wouldn't be so bad.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Before you switch, ask yourself about the current environment. Is the office an agreeable environment? Do you find the work challenging? Are you motivated? Are there experienced wise older folk to learn from? Does the company treat people well and have sound finances?
These are questions that should stimulate you to think about whether you are happy working there. The grass isn't always greener. The money might be better but this is only one consideration. Working with quality people, learning new skills and technologies, knowing a project has a good chance of success, knowing the company will be around in 6 months are other factors.
Not every project will be a success. Have backup plans for when your team do all get shafted. Perhaps you could say to the boss at the other company "I'm content in my current job but if the situation changes..."
As you're just starting out and earning good money (relative to the rest of the population, perhaps not in your industry just yet) don't be afraid to spend it. Serious stuff like a spouse, mortgage and kids can wait. Travel, see the world. Many contractors enjoy the freedom of working for 6-12 months and then taking a break. 4 weeks annual leave in a permanent job? Once you get over to the other side of the world, 4 weeks is gone in an instant.
Some perspective on what motivates you is more important than worrying about whether you should have taken a 'dream job' or not. My advice, unless you are really offered a huge wad of extra cash, stay in a job while you enjoy it. Patience...
It's all how you cast the situation. If you tell your next prospective employer that you have been consulting, then the short spells at jobs is instantly explained. If they ask questions that make you think they're looking for someone more long-term, then you can either decide to move on or say something like, "Consulting has been fun and I've learned a great deal about many businesses, but I'm looking to change my lifestyle and settle down." But only say the latter if you really mean it, since lying will kill your consulting possibilities long-term as word gets around.
The thing about I.T. is, with a few exceptions it's all project-based. All projects end and most of them finish inside 12 months. Plus, the industry itself is quite turbulent. So whereas a 5-month stint in, say, insurance or finance makes you look fickle or suspect, it's perfectly reasonable and expected in I.T.
But at the end of the day, the real answer as to whether the job-hunting is truly fickle or intentional comes down to how you want to live. If you want something stable, then you are being fickle by hopping jobs. If you'd rather 'do it for the adventure' by consulting, then you're being deliberate and reasonable. Yet, as a previous poster said, make sure that whatever you do you're not leaving anyone in the lurch. If you do short stints, leave after completing the project or a significant milestone, not in the middle.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
As far as advice to the candidate, I don't know who you should speak with regarding compensation as a contractor, but it might be easier on the CV to approach them and say, "Hey, I keep getting job offers and it's getting harder and harder to turn down a 50 percent raise. So unless you can match, I think we're through". Keep in mind the headhunter has been billing their client for nearly 4 times what you earn, and can live with a 50 percent increase in wages (and probably already does in some cases -- your coworkers may be paid twice as much as you!). Basically, you are their profit center. In the worst case, just be prepared to walk like you normally do. The good news is that a resume is supposed to be a highlight of accomplishments, not a life story. Obviously some places have an application requesting everywhere you've ever worked, and it may come up during interview. Just say you were young and naive, but that the market eventually found a solution. Probably the best way to stop this is to figure out what they're charging your clients, and base you salary requirements not on how much more you'd be making, but an improvement on how much they're keeping.
Managers hate headhunters, for reasons the parent stated, but there's not much in the way of alternatives. The traditional way of seeking all qualified candidates through HR requires sifting through thousands of applications for a single position, and interviewing dozens. On the one hand, you can reduce the candidate pool by poorly advertising, but you're also risking missing out on high quality people who aren't looking for employment.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
"My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me."
We had to get through about 100 resumes for two positions that are currently open, and job-hoppers did not make the short list.
The positions are important ones in our company and the learning curve is too high to keep retraining, so we just don't hire people with resumes such as yours.
Why is it so bad to only be in it for the money? The vast majority of jobs out there, even if challenging or non trivial, are horrifically menial and unexciting.
You, the average IT coder/admin-person, are not cutting edge. You might write mainframe control scripts or think out test cases for the intranet support web app or code out bussiness logic or write requirements all day. You don't have to be an expert in the field to do your job, although it would undoubtedly help.
Very little of what the vast majority of people in this industry, be they developers or support minions, can be accurately described as "eventful" or "exciting". Only in companies inside the tech industry (and possibly only 'Industry Leader' companies like GOOG or MSFT) and academia will you probably produce anything tangible and worth getting worked up about. If no one working on the same project as you are is writing whitepapers or presenting at conferences or even discussing it at length with an entrenched and involved user community, well, chances are you are probably part of the 90%* of the industry whose work will never be seen outside of your company's intranet.
I used to think that way, too. I was mildly shocked when the manager who was interviewing me for a co-op/junior sort-of-dev position at Large Retailer replied "Well, the money. And I get to see my family" when I asked him the same question. But then I realised, so what? That's perfectly valid. I know very, very few people who work for their self enjoyment first and to pay their bills second. I'd go as far as to say that outside of satisfaction in a job well done, which many people have and share, virtually no one is in a position of actively caring about the Job Itself.
Ideally, I'd love to do something exciting and stay late at work with a smile on my face. However, I know that this is very unlikely unless I start my own company. To that extent, I'm happy to get my self fulfillment through my own free time - my own projects, the girlfriend, etc.
Why is it not enough to be competent and capable? Why demand an unrealistic level of commitment from your employees? Why must we define our life by what we do in our day jobs?
Disclaimer: I'm a young pup who is about to embark on his very first, over-compensated job in Large Bank, still halfway through university.
*Made-up-but-close-to-real-value