Get the experience you want ASAP, invest as much of your salary as you can, and then job hop.
Cynical? Maybe, but I don't think so. Effective? Definitely. The free market only works if all the people in it continually chase their own best interest.
Once you have a family you'll find that they are not excited about moving every few years and having to pack up, abandon all their friends, go to a new school, spouse find a new job, find a new house, find new childcare, unpack, etc. Can still work if you live in an area with a lot of jobs, but not very practical if you're in areas where job-hopping implies moving.
People used to be more willing to do this, but that was at a time when most households had one working partner and one at home taking care of the house and kids. Most people's lives are more complicated now, and moving is a lot more hassle.
This is the reason tech professionals worldwide are resisting the Return-To-Office (RTO) mandate. The vision is an industry free of this unnecessary hindrance. It's not solely a hurdle for older individuals seeking a career switch, but it extends to anyone committed to their families and communities. It's also a significant concern for individuals with disabilities, who have tailored their homes to accommodate their needs, and students who cannot continue their education from overseas.
Regardless, relocation is always stressful and costly. In essence, job transitions come with this hefty toll, which employers sometimes exploit to exert additional pressure on employees before they resign. This is particularly true in towns where the industry's potential employers are scarce — sectors like robotics, space, automotive, and similar are prime examples.
A person can endure considerable work hardships before deciding to uproot their family and relocate to a foreign country, starting from scratch. Imagine grappling with no credit history, a lack of local language proficiency, no familiar community, no personal vehicle, no trusted family doctors — essentially, nothing. For those working in sectors like aerospace, opportunities in most countries are restricted to one or possibly two employers. This keeps employees locked into toxic workplaces and helps neither the worker nor the company which can become complacent and feels no pressure to act right.
The remedy is remote work. Global, ideally. But regional is enough.
If you job hop somewhere close to where you live, or you are job hopping into remote work, all the hassle of moving your family is not an issue.
There are still some downsides, for example, you might get X% higher salary (something you know upfront), but instead of having 4-5 hours of work with autonomy, few meetings easy-going colleagues, you might get annoying people, boring work, micromanagement, and endless meeting (which is something you can usually only know for sure after switching)...
Fun fact is that I didn't even make up that scenario, I literally didn't get an offer at Zillow because of it.
This works in tech but not necessarily in other white collar fields like finance. In finance, there is an unwritten rule that you are supposed to settle with a firm by ~30-35 and stay there for the rest of your career. Many firms don't hire laterally unless they have no other choice. Professionals like investment bankers and CFAs are recruited straight out of university and groomed to assume leadership positions in the long term.
If you're determined to stay in finance, you'll probably have to stick to this model. But for a finance professional, there are many opportunities in other lines of business.
Eh, I would say it depends... Investment banking and hedge funds, sure, you better join early and stay for the long term. But for private equity and other investment management (notably family office, fund of funds and endowment management), you can still be recruited laterally. I've even seen veteran MD level guys being regularly hired at my previous PE firm.
In fact, with leadership at the top not yet retiring at the biggest and mid-tier firms, it's becoming increasingly hard to justify staying around for that promotion. In my personal experience, I have yet to see anyone make anything beyond Principal (the tier below partner/MD) at the large PE shops before their 40s. Most instead go down a notch to mid tier firms, go to an emerging market office, or start their own. Not to mention the number of seats higher up is also on the decline.
Very few people wouldn’t take more money and better hours/benefits if offered to them.
I've seen so many engineers and managers spend 0.5 - 2.5 decades at a job, getting gradually more stagnant, adding a fraction of the value they could if fully utilized.
For these people, a minor shakeup would do a world of good. The companies that employ these people have grown complacent and assume these people are part of the furniture; it's bad for them too.
I remember one engineer and his manager who worked together for thirty years. The manager took 100% of the credit, and the engineer put up with this for the entire time. Eventually the engineer retires, and the manager is now screwed. A couple of months later it's obvious he hasn't used his brain in decades, and gets fired right before retirement. That manager was once really smart too.
Both of these people would have done themselves and the world a favour by job-hopping many times in that period.
Further lot of tech work is nowadays done by external contractors in enterprises so workers anyway have to hop even if they don't want to.