Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

If you have only done 1.5-2.5 year stints (i.e., you do not have even one stint of 4 years or more), it is a problem, because it could mean one or more of the following:

Soft skills

- You do not get along well with your colleagues - You do not get promotions, more responsibilities, raises, or you leave in order to get them (this is actually pretty common and perfectly fine from your perspective as an IC but managers will see it differently) - You have not navigated a crisis or faced significant adversity at a company, so you are somewhat untested in this regard

Technical skills

- You have not worked on complex products at a high-enough level (it easily takes 2 years to gain expertise in a complex system and start contributing more than small features or bug fixes) - You have not stuck around to support the mistakes you have made, so you have no actual experience. The "experience" part of software development comes primarily from this. - You do not have a high-enough overview of product development and have not seen products go over a few cycles (even with cloud, software lifecycles are longer than 1-2 years and major iterations of products take a bit longer than that)

Managerial - You haven't convinced a manager that you are management material. Management is a different job from engineering and it takes more than a year, easily, to convince a manager that you can be a good manager yourself (unless you have followed a manager from one job to another) - If your companies are in different domains, you do not have enough domain expertise in any one area to leverage, and maybe you do not care about the domains you have worked in. You may not be suited to the line of work.

Thanks for your answer. I partially agree. I was born and raised in a small town, where jobs were few, but there was this BigTech office. I started there as an intern, became a full time employee and stayed for around 2 years. I left it to work at a cooler project with better pay, but it was a 3h drive from/to my place - moving wasn't an option because I was taking care of my parents. I left after 1y due to the commuting time, and joined a startup as one of the first hires - stayed 2y there but investors pulled the plug, the business wasn't growing fast enough. So out of a job I decided to move to a bigger city and got a good job, was promoted to lead a small team after 1y and really liked it. After 2y there a colleague also new to the city offered me a position at another BigCo paying 2x and leading a bigger team, so I accepted. Turns out the company had a horrible culture and I got burnout, depression and anxiety attacks, and I still have nightmares of execs yelling shit at me. Finally, I left so here I am, 6th company, it's going well and I got a raise after my first year. That's just to say I may have made junior mistakes and then some bad life decisions but it doesn't mean I or people with similar stories don't have soft or managerial skills. Technical skills that are only obtained after multiple years chewing the same product are another thing, though.

Agree! I would like to add to all of the above, the following thoughts:

In today's climate 3-4 year stints might be OK early career. Or maybe just one year as the first job out of school - it's understandable if that wasn't a good fit. But a history of 1-2 year stints without some good reason? You're a hopper and I'd burn your resume. Hard pass.

- It takes time to become really productive at a new job. I'd estimate 6 months to a year. Why invest if you're just going to leave as soon as you're finally starting to be a net positive?

- I don't think software engineering is an assembly-line job. It's a craft and I don't appreciate companies or employees trying to make it a fungible manpower vs. compensation game. You're a code-monkey-for-hire, not an engineer. It's toxic to the other engineering professionals that would be subjected to you. If I wanted that, I'd just hire consultants.

- It shows a pattern of short-term vs. long-term thinking. That pattern will often represent itself in more than just job choices. For example, taking engineering short-cuts to meet a near-term goal at the expense of long-term quality. What do you care, you'll be gone before we realize the mess you made?

Yes. Seriously bad look. But wait! Perhaps all those things I just assumed aren't true of you! What I'd say is that this is just what it looks like and what many people will assume. You should proceed with awareness of that and perhaps try to mitigate it.

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