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I think the blog post was written specifically for you. Maybe you're wrong?

Specifically with job-hoppers, I've found that they can hit the ground running very fast and make solid contributions in compressed time-frames. The best ones cherry pick the best practices from a more diverse set of previous employers.

Sure, maybe they are good at getting right to work. But then they are gone and all that institutional knowledge goes with them and you have to start over with someone else.

There is a lot of value to having long term employees that have been around and know what is going on.

This is why a documentation culture is so very important. Even on the best terms, the average tenure of a tech employee is two years. That's just today's economic reality. As a leader, a project should not be considered 'done' until its documented to such a level that a well-meaning new employee can come in, read the docs, and be mostly up to speed with at least the daily 'care-and-feeding' tasks and the top 5 failure modes.

There is a lot of risk of long term employees entrenching bad practices by leveraging their political clout due to seniority. In some ways that's worse than the scenario you describe.

Shouldn't this argue for everyone having long tenures, since it's unlikely you'll actively fire competent employees just because they started at their job too long and got too well trusted.

Having a few long term employees and a bunch of short term ones is the worst case scenario, since it only accentuates the disparity in company-specific reputation and clout.

Well in the UK as a DevOps my role is in such a high demand that many workers (including me) only take contract roles as they pay roughly double than permanent. But as a contractor my CV is going to be 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and not years at a place.

This is how it is here and personally I think I have accelerated experience accumulation as every contract excercises a different set of my skills.

Maybe other markets don’t have a contracting culture but I don’t think my CV should automatically be trashed for having short but concentrated employers.

I see where you're coming from but OTOH the path to increase your pay in the tech industry seems to be switching companies. It's not like you're going to see a 10-20% raise every year staying with the same company. Obviously this usually only works for a finite number of years at the beginning of your career.

Exactly. If it goes both ways then it is also on the company to retain the employee.

I think this is tough for both sides.

I work with early stage companies, and those companies don't always exist a year. I've also worked with companies (for multiple years) that were bought & sold a few times, so two employment stints can easily look like five.

> companies (for multiple years) that were bought & sold a few times, so two employment stints can easily look like five

You can make it clear on your own resume that corporate changes differ from changes in your role.

> those companies don't always exist a year

You're not necessarily at fault for that, but being part of multiple failed businesses would probably not earn you any bonus points.

What if I was part of a university co-op program where I work for 4-8 months at a time between academic terms (which I am) ? I've left an interview where I could hear the CTO say "so why was he fired after 4 months?" as I walked out the door.

I understand you have 300 resumes, though -- should I put Co-op or Internship in big red letters before the item?

Just make the heading on the section be “4 month internship at blah”. That should be fine.

You may have met a CTO that wasn’t paying attention but that’s not the problem here. Having short periods of work while you’re studying is fine.

Flipping more than a couple of full time jobs is a big red flag. You need a really good reason.

Agree with you. Caveat is that a "couple" can vary based on the length of your career. If you have been working for 20 years and in that time, you had 3 jobs that you only held for 6 months, I'd look at that very differently than someone with a shorter career span.

That’s fair. It’s the narrative that counts. If you look like you’re a good investment then you might be asked to explain but, at least, you’ll probably have the opportunity.

If your history says risk then you need something special to counteract it or you won’t get the chance.

Any reasonable or legitimate circumstance for short job periods can be explained with a well written resume, but yes it should be extremely clear one way or another that you aren't dropping into a series of short jobs and either getting fired or leaving for better job offers.

This runs counter to your initial statement: "I don't really care why your career has played like that."

Which is probably why he's had such a hard time explaining it in the first place. Lots of people aren't going to take the time to actually read and understand the situation.

This is my experience, yes. I suspect many hiring staff look over the job titles and snap onto company/dates employed -- and never see the word "co-op". Thus my idea.

Having attended a university that was coop-based, I've had this discussion (or did when it was more relevant) and the key truly is "a well written resume" (plenty of coop positions come and go so...)

Often I would have conversations with people about resumes where they had problems and those problems would be things like: * How long is your resume...? (way too long, often) * Can you drop/compress any positions? (keep recent/relevant) * Instead of "Employment", can you say "Coop Experience"? for the section? * etc.

(thought questions, not asking for responses). I do agree, you definitely have to make the "coop" part super obvious otherwise you won't make it past initial filters.

Make it clear. Seeing this on a resume is actually a bonus in my mind compared to someone without that experience.

Of course the farther into your career the less important this is, but for new developers I would say this is an important and positive detail to highlight.

Internships don't count to the general rules around job tenure.

You should probably be putting "Intern" after your job title on your previous roles, if you aren't already.

It might be worth it to also clear up your work history during the on-site interview too.

I sympathize with your position but bad management/toxic culture are also systemic problems in the software world. It could be that the person just had a string of bad projects and was trying to avoid getting burned out. It would suck if someone got locked out of a good job that might have helped their career due to that.

> Not always true, but in general terms if you have a great employer then you tend to hang around.

FTFY

Your statemen in the last paragraph about increased value is correct. Alas, too often that does not correspond to the proportional increase in pay. For some reason other companies are willing to pay more.

There is also “people join companies but leave managers“.

I don't know, would it hurt to have one person on the team only interested in pulling tasks and banging out code? They rest of the team could use the extra time to deepen their knowledge of the business.

Given the expense that goes into hiring, on-boarding, and off-boarding employees, yes having to do that more than once a year can hurt. If it's fine, they should be contractors, not employees.

I understand the sentiment, but think about it like this: You've been working at a company for six months. Recruiters, good and bad, have been sending you offers to interview for all sorts of jobs. A recruiter finally sends you an opportunity that you can't turn down (2x compensation, more vacation, dream position at dream company, shorter commute with same pay, etc). You interview, you ace it, you get the offer.

Do you turn it down to build more tenure at your current company? Or do you accept because it improves your situation right now?

Rinse, wash, repeat.

Based on the number of emails I've gotten from recruiters (on a stale resume, mind you!), I'd say that "the market" doesn't care about length of time at an employer as much as one might think.

All other things being equal yeah you have to screen resumes somehow.

But I think the point made in the OP is worth reflecting on: job hoppers may actually illuminate desirable candidates.