Comment by jackmaney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackmaney | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> If the work is good and the company is good, why leave?

Possible reasons, off the top of my head:

1. Being approached by a recruiter or hiring manager and end up being given an offer you can't refuse (eg much more money, dream job, etc).

2. Your spouse or significant other has to move to another city for their job, you don't want to leave them, and your current employer won't let you work remotely.

2a. Ditto with needing to move to care for an older and/or ill family member.

3. A shift of passion into a new career.

4. Health problems that cause such an extended leave of absence that you may as well leave.

5. I've encountered some managers who are leery of people who have spent "too long" at one place, wondering, eg "Why did s/he stay there for ten years? Did this person just find a spot to coast and collect a paycheck? Why hasn't s/he moved on to bigger and better things?" I think this line of thinking is just as knee-jerk as being leery of "job hoppers".

re 5: Or they live in the SF/Bay Area and that one job pays them enough that they can afford to pay their mortgage (if they are lucky enough to have one), children's school/college, car, etc. and still have money left over for date night. Once all those expenses pile on, there are very few companies that will pay you enough. You aren't going to hop to a risky startup @100k/year when you have those kinds of expenses.

But then, if you finally got that job at Google, you can probably move on to wherever you want afterward no matter how long you were there.

I keep hearing this a lot. But is it really true that a tenure at Google makes you super attractive for other companies? How does Facebook compare?

On the engineering/product side of things, a lot of it boils down to the technical challenge of their interview process. Essentially, getting a job offer from those companies (and others of their ilk) show that you have very high capabilities. Their interview bar is so much higher than most other places, that you are proving yourself capable of the technical side of things.

That doesn't mean you have the soft skills or personality to succeed somewhere else, or even that your technical skills will matter to the new company's product, but it's attractive to the recruiters/hiring managers trying to fill roles.

re: 5. That's just wrong-headed logic. Nothing wrong with being at a company that long. In fact I would love to see more companies able to keep devs for their entire career.

Can anyone name a company that, in 2016, is known for keeping a significant number of their employees for their entire career?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com