"Sorry Fred, you meet, even exceed, all of our expectations for the position, however you prefer to stay too long, so fuck right off."
Seriously? This is absurd.
Seriously? This is absurd.
If he can describe how he was meeting his career goals while also staying in the same position for nine years, then there's no reason to avoid him.
But if he spent the last six years stagnating, it might be worth giving extra scrutiny to how up-to-date his skillset is.
I don’t care about personal development to the same degree as making money. That’s what the business is about after all.
What they'll do is see it as a red flag and dig into it and find out what the circumstances were. If they feel those circumstances are ok, then you're fine. If they feel they were not ok, then you'll get dinged.
Versus back when I started my career, it would have been a universally positive indicator, that would score you points over a "job hopper". Nowadays it seems the job hopper is in a better position.
Improve safety for the users. Preserve the sanity of the ops team. Start actually competing for our business instead of relying on relationships with politicians. That sort of thing.
Most often these hireworthy behaviors correlate with bringing value to the business, but sometimes the business's values need correcting.
I realize this is an abnormal perspective, but I think it's important.
I spent seven years at a company whose main talent was finding ways to sell software that nobody would use (fewer bugs that way). We would build relationships with politicians who needed to spend their budget in order to have it renewed next year at the same size, and sell them something that claimed to do whatever made them look good.
It took us lowly engineers a long time to find out what was going on, but one day somebody actually tried to use it and you could tell from the bugs that nobody before them had ever managed to make it work.
Corrupting politicians is profitable. It adds value to the business. Creating an R&D group to actually drive the industry forward? That's risky, and in the end, less profitable. But I respect the hell out of the people who managed to do it, business value be damned, and would hire them to smack me around from time to time if I were a CEO.
It's more along the lines of "Fred, you exceed all our expectations but we're worried that you haven't been keeping up with the trade skills in your area due to being in only one company and likely been way too cozy there to evolve your skills".