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Comment by boznz | Hacker News Reader

Strange I used to throw CV's in the rubbish bin if they repeatedly moved jobs every 2 years or under. My rational for that was that they would probably only last 2 years in our company so I preferred someone more stable. Small teams hurt when you keep loosing staff and training is not cheap.

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Discarding them outright is a bit excessive, but it's actually very common for managers to de-prioritize resumes with excessive job hopping. Either that, or to craft back-loaded compensation packages that encourage longer tenures.

A few short jobs is not a problem, but when someone has a resume full of 12-month jobs and constant churn it's not a good sign. If you do have to hire a job hopper, you have to be careful to not put them on critical tasks or anything long-term because it's not like they're going to suddenly decide to stay at your company for 4 years when they couldn't do it anywhere else. It's not a mystery.

> Small teams hurt when you keep loosing staff and training is not cheap.

How come companies don't price that in accordingly then?

Some actually do, but not as you are thinking, if you hop in less than X years, all trainings have to be paid back.

my cv is full of that.

first job out of college- 2 years, left because I didn't want to work on legacy php anymore

second job - got laid off after one year(funnily enough I was hired on to contact 2 months after the lay off)

third - left after 3 years because the company was having payroll issues.

I've been at my current company for 1.5 years. I love it a lot but I'm seeing the market and could likely make 2x what I'm making now so I'm considering entering the job search to at least see what I'm actually worth to negotiate with my boss.

you would probably throw my resume in the trash but I feel like I left for legitimate reasons at all my jobs. do you have any suggestions to avoid being perceived as a job hopper

I doubt I would (throw your resume in the trash), Its an art not a science, you're just trying to get someone who will contribute to stability in the team rather than leave at the first opportunity a CV can also make that clear.

And that's a company's prerogative. But in the US, that mentality can cause you to miss out on great contributors.

For example, if you are building a new e-commerce platform and can hire someone with 1.5 years of experience shipping a successful project at Shopify, you should do that. They will give you more than someone chipping away at a non e-commerce SaaS for a half dozen years.

Point is, context is key. But I can't speak to outside of the US.

Where are you based at? In the past decade in Silicon Valley even annual movement was not uncommon.

HK then Small town UK then Small town NZ. I doubt 1% of HN works in Silicon Valley or on cutting edge designs.

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