Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tyrannosaurs | Hacker News Reader

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It's not a myth, at least not in most cases.

If I take you on I want some indication that you're going to stay around long enough for the investment we're going to make in you to be worthwhile. We'll normally pay a recruitment fee and then we'll pay you while you're learning about our product, our industry, our processes and the specific technologies you haven't worked with that we use, and we'll be paying our existing staff to take time out from coding to do those things. That's not inconsiderable.

Obviously your experience may render some of that irrelevant. If that's the case then if you're massively better than the other candidates I may take the risk but if you're not, then I can take you or I can take the person who is as good but will stick around longer. That's not a tough decision.

I'm not looking for gold watch territory or even an indication that you might be around for 5 years, and I'm not looking for a guarantee, but if your CV shows a pattern of you moving every 15 months I need to work out why I think I won't be your next 15 month stint and if I think I think I am whether it'll be worth my while.

Most people jump when the company is not paying market price so they switch.

I move very fast from companies that don't keep up with pay. I stay at companies with regular pay rises. I've had both. So in my mind it means that companies concerned with job hopping, are really hoping to keep your pay down. It's an early warning .

I see where you're coming from but I disagree.

I accept people leave when their salary diverges more than a certain amount from the market rate but that would normally - even in a good market - take time.

Personally I wouldn't expect a major pay rise within the first 12 months of a job (if you do then you've probably not negotiated your starting salary properly). Add to that a couple of months after that to find another job and a month notice and the shortest stint relating to poor pay I'd expect is about 15 months. If you're staying 15 months or so in places which are bad payers and a few years in places which are good then your average is probably going to be 2-3 years. To me at least that's not a problematic amount of time (particularly not if you've shown you can stick at least place for 3 years or so because that says to me you're not inherently disloyal).

So short stints don't say anything, at least not much, about money when I read a CV.

It's simple logic, people move because they can better deal somewhere else otherwise there would be no point. So if people move, the benefits aren't keeping up with other jobs they can get.

Most employees are not loyal, because they know companies are not. If they think companies are loyal, they are probably new to the job market. Once a project ends, and there's nothing else to work on they will get rid of you. There's no reason why employees should not think the same way.

Obviously there is no one rule for everyone but personally in 20 years working in IT I've never left a job because of money (and I've left a few). I've left because of uncertainty, because the work was bad, because there were too many arseholes where I was, because my skills were rusting but never for money.

In the past five years a fair number of people have left the company I work for and I'd estimate about 25% were money related.

As I say there's no one rule but I've seen developers put up dreadful money for a job they liked and take a pay cut to get out of somewhere they hated and if I had to generalise I'd go with that over them following the pay cheque.

I never meant for money(one part of it), i said a better deal, or a better complete package if you will.

You are completely ignoring being laid off, that is a major reason to look at job duration.

"Most people jump when the company is not paying market price so they switch."

I've seen no data that suggests this is true, and from my own anecdotes I've found it to be untrue as well. The people I see that switch a lot seem to be simply unable to deal with colleagues or challenges that aren't going their way. Lots and lots of prima donna's in this industry that do not have the skill set to change things that are problems.

Even the money concern is a bit of a red herring. Being unable to justify pay increases at your current employer may be a sign of a bad employer, but it's just as likely the sign of someone who either cannot present their value proposition properly or someone who overestimates their value. Both are bad signs for the candidate.

Being able to justify or not justify has little to do with rises. Any smart person can justify just about anything, including justifying no pay rises.

Decent challenges, and decent colleagues are included in my definition of market price.

"Any smart person can justify just about anything"

This turns out to not be true of lots of people. Being able to understand your value to your employer and to outline it in a compelling way is a skill that is very under developed in software tech candidates. It's also a skill that I've found correlates well with good hires.

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