Roam Where You Want To?

December 5, 2007 6:17 PM

Is moving around from job-to-job really all that common in today's market, or is it a red-flag to employers if you don't stay at a job for more than a year?

I am in my early 30s, and have been working (technically speaking) since my late teens/early 20s. The longest I have ever stayed at a job has been roughly 3 years, and currently I have 5 jobs on my resume (reaching back to 1998). The majority of these 'gigs' have run about a year and a half.

For the most part, I have rationalized that the earlier jobs were to get me through school, so it is no wonder that I 'outgrew' them. There was one instance where I was laid off after the dot.com bomb, so that has been the only job that ended for a reason beyond my control. (All other jobs, including the one where I was laid off, I did well and were recognized often for my efforts.)

I find that with my most recent job, and the 2-3 jobs preceding it, I start getting pretty restless around the 9 month-1 year mark and sort of run out of steam in some ways. This usually follows a long period of learning the ropes, mastering new processes or computer systems, and creating new or impoving existing ways of doing things.

Does this sort of thing seem to happen more frequently now and is considered quite 'normal' for today's ever-evolving workforce? Or does this mean I'm overly ambitious and should stick things out a bit? (Some of these questions, I'll admit, are posed to myself while also posing to you...)

Any help/stories would be awesome.

posted by Ham_On_Rye to work & money (14 comments total)

I haven't had it hurt me yet as long as you're always moving up in both responsibility and pay (aka you 'have a good reason', moving to be with a significant other or for better schools for your kids etc. would fit into "good reason") and as long as you leave completed projects and a positive vibe behind you. I've had a job at least every other year for the past eight years. In the past five years, I've had four jobs.

Recruiters tell me these days that they expect multiple-page resumes from anyone with more than a year or two of experience.
posted by SpecialK at 6:24 PM on December 5, 2007

As a hiring manager in the IT area it's a bit of a red flag to me, mostly because I want to avoid people who "...start getting pretty restless around the 9 month-1 year mark and sort of run out of steam in some ways". It takes a good few months to even get someone close to productive where I work (there is quite a bit of domain specific knowledge) and it's a waste of our time to train someone for 6 months who leaves 3 months later.

It's not enough of a red flag to stop me from wanting to interview you, but I will for sure be asking about it and our HR department will as well. As long as you have a good reason it's not a deal breaker, and I'd probably be ok with someone who said "I tend to get bored after 9 months" if I thought that it seemed reasonable given the jobs they had taken.
posted by true at 6:28 PM on December 5, 2007

It's not the dealbreaker it once was, within reason. 5 jobs since 1998 isn't horrible, especially if any of them were temp/contract. I saw one resume last year that had 6 jobs in 5 years - that was pretty crazy. The guy had awesome skills, but he had a pattern of coming in, grabbing all the new experience he could, and moving on - which was exactly what he did when we hired him. The guy lasted 7 months.

Interestingly enough, I've experienced the exact opposite. I went on a few interviews last year, and having been with the same company for 7 years raised a few eyebrows. A recruiter (one of the very few non-snakey ones I spoke to) mentioned that sometimes staying at one job too long is an indication of complacency and a lack of ambition.
posted by deadmessenger at 6:44 PM on December 5, 2007

Not that unusual; I worked a number of contract jobs before going full-time (last job 4 years, at current job 4 years now). The shortest was a month, the longest a year.

For me, the contracts are a very positive thing, as they give me a breadth of experience that apparently is unusual (ISPs, Advertising, Finance, Utilities).

Today, a key reason for me to stick to a job is the opportunity to develop outside of programming. Plus I have a wife and child, so I have to be all 'responsible' :)

I also have experienced the feelings of burn-out that you describe; I've found that the ability to get over that is a useful skill to have, and you may want to develop that.
posted by lowlife at 6:54 PM on December 5, 2007

Another data point, I've been developing software since 1997, in that time I've had 6 jobs, none of them longer than 2 1/2 years, shortest being 3 months (shudder and mistake and wretched loathing). For the first time, it did come up in my last round of interviews.

When I'm on the other side (hiring), I ask for explanations, watch the candidate while he answers, and use it as a chance to evaluate honesty, ie, I don't care much why you left, it's just a useful stress question. That said, if I (or you) worked for larger companies that had a clearly defined, and good career path for developers, it would be a more critical point.

Depends on the company, but usually being good at what you do is the best offense. Strong developers are still rare enough that short durations don't seem to be an ugly enough wart to stop a hire decision.

It's good that you're asking those questions though, I found that when I start feeling the restlessness you describe I need to quickly identify whether the source is truly my work, or if it's me. Good luck finding the answer.
posted by minedev at 6:58 PM on December 5, 2007

5 in 10 years is pushing it I'd try to find a job you can settle in a bit for your next gig - or if you're a bit of a nomad just contract out and wear it like a badge. I'd like to see at least one job you kept for about 3-5 years. We all make mistakes and if you're contracting or if there is an unforseen layoff in there then its pretty easy to right off.

This in itself wouldn't prevent me from hiring you if everything else is in line. But if you're on the edge It could tip you out of contention.

Anecdotally I helped hire my last boss who after 7 years at a large tech company had spent 3 months at one job and 6 months at another when we hired him and I remember that his jumping ship so often was the worst thing I could say about him. He ended up lasting 3 months - just didn't fit in.
posted by bitdamaged at 7:21 PM on December 5, 2007

Length of previous employment is something I look at when I'm deciding which applicants to interview, and if you've got a lot of jobs that are only a year or a little more, it is a red flag. (But please note that I'm not in your field, and I'm sure the job length expectations are different by field.) Typically for the jobs I'm helping to hire for, there's a good 6-9 month learning curve, and then I want the person to actually stick around for a while after they're up to optimum competence in the job. So I'm hoping to get someone to stick around for at least two years, and it worries me if the person's never held a job that long.

That said, it's not something that will cause me not to interview someone. But I will ask more specific questions about past jobs than I otherwise would have, and I want to hear a good reason for the short stints. It's fine if that reason is just "I learned all I could in that position", but it does seem a little suspect if the person has apparently sucked every bit of knowledge and opportunity out of every single position they've had in under a year.
posted by Stacey at 8:05 PM on December 5, 2007

Jumping from job to job in 10 years says to me that this is a person who either (a) will go where the money is and doesn't care about the company/product/team; (b) can only follow orders (just programming from the directions) and cannot handle higher-level tasks (architecture); or, (c) is not a leader who can carry the vision. The most successful teams I've worked with have had one or more people who have the deep institutional knowledge of how the code works and the business knowledge of why it works the way it does. This is the experience that makes you indispensable; not tech skills.

Just my two cents. Not to mention, any job that is fun takes at least a year to learn, at which point it becomes interesting.
posted by sfkiddo at 9:58 PM on December 5, 2007

In software engineering I start to look askance at at a resume where the median is less than 2 years. A median of 18 months is probably the lowest I would go with and I would have serious reservations about giving that person any vital deliverables.
posted by tkolar at 10:09 PM on December 5, 2007

It depends on the job and the circumstances. For any job in which you are expendable (ie, a one-off project job, a contract job), then hiring a job hopper is not a problem. For entry level jobs, smaller/less structured companies, and desperate to hire situations, it probably also wouldn't be a problem. For higher level corporate jobs, it's more of a problem.

For one thing, if you always quit after a year or two, that means you've never stuck around to see how your product/process design turns out. You've never maintained your product/process and never figured out how to take feedback and turn it into a new and better product/process (or, alternatively, scrapped).

It also means you've never figured out how to grow your career at one company. Where I work, people frequently take new jobs internally every 2 to 3 years but stick around at the company much longer than that. That means that at the 1 year itch point, you can start to develop a pretty clear idea of where you want to go and what you need to do to get there and then execute appropriately. You learn how to ask for what you want, negotiate (and re-negotiate) your current role, network within the company, etc.

Also, if you leave soon, you never have the opportunity to mentor people within your own company. This is another good skill, and it can be very rewarding.

Leaving companies quickly may also be a sign that you don't have the world's best interpersonal communication skills. You may not know how to resolve conflict without leaving.

sfkiddo also has some great points.

Sticking around at a job has its merits. If you find yourself in a position with a supportive boss and management chain, stick around for a while and see what you can learn. I am a reforming job hopper. It is very painful for me to stick my ass in a chair and figure out how to make it work without leaving (two years and counting). I have to admit though that I've learned a lot by moving into a second product cycle with the same people.
posted by crazycanuck at 5:46 AM on December 6, 2007

As lowlife did, you should try contracting. It's a great way to broaden your experience and skillset. You don't have to get corporate culture all over you, and can take a new contract whenever you find a better one. When you're ready to settle into a "permanent" job, hiring people shouldn't have qualms about seeing short-term contract jobs, so long as you stayed long enough that it's obvious you didn't fail at the outset.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:02 AM on December 6, 2007

At least in my industry, hopping to a new job is one of the only ways you can obtain higher rank/promotion on a reasonable time line. Everybody does it.
posted by kaseijin at 7:24 AM on December 6, 2007

Another thing to consider is seeking jobs that would be a fit to your love of the honeymoon phase of a project as well as your aversion to maintenance.

I'm not sure what you do, but you might find a position in an agency or consulting environment rewarding. They often provide the chance to get in and get out relatively quickly so you can move on to new projects and new problems to solve.
posted by Kimberly at 12:11 PM on December 6, 2007

The diversity of responses here is probably your best answer. I'm in grad school with a research focus on the economy and labor, and decreasing job tenure seems to one of the trends popping up economy-wide (even in Japanese companies, which have traditionally been hardcore job-for-life employers).

But economy-wide statistics don't mean anything to you, because you just one person. Could you let us know more about what field you're in? sfkiddo, crazycanuck and kaseijin are spot on in describing the tension between companies that try to cultivate long-term, organizational skill versus those that look at the labor market as a whole for the exact person who fills their needs. It depends on the occupation and the industry.
posted by McBearclaw at 11:18 PM on December 6, 2007