Hacker News Reader

Comment by baskethead | Hacker News Reader

When looking at his LinkedIn, I only see one job with tenure over 4 years almost 10 years back and most other jobs are well below 2 years. It seems like he definitely is able to find new jobs very efficiently so I think his advice here is valuable.

However if I were hiring for an engineering leader, I would probably pass him over. I don’t see anyone being an effective leader by only sticking around for less than 2 years. Having tenures less than 2 years especially at senior roles doesn’t give a lot of positive feelings of leadership in my opinion.

View on HN

I don't think this is only for leadership roles. If you don't stick around long enough to see how your work has evolved, your APIs have been used, how easy is it to adapt your work to new requirements, how you handed over ownership to someone else/another team etc etc, I think you left very valuable learning opportunities on the table.

Job hopping attitude is very visible in someone's work as well. You see them focusing on short term gains only with most of their technical decisions and leave the mess for someone else to cleanup while they move on to the next thing. Zero skin in the game.

As an employee you should never think of yourself as having skin in the game. The company pays you for your time and expertise and compensates for your time. How successfully they leverage that time and expertise is on them, not on you.

Job hopping is the most effective way to increase your income and position in tech.

I think you misunderstood the parent posts. It's that your impact on a particular project doesn't become visible for a few years. If you think you quit after delivering your project near to budget and timeline, then you're left thinking you did a pretty good job, but only later is it possible to see if your architectural decisions are easy to maintain; if your API is easy to use; etc. The Senior Roles are supposed to have grown in knowledge about how all their decisions play out over a long time period, but if they've never stick around to observe the consequences of their decisions, then that might lead a recruiter to suspect whether they have learned what a Senior would be expected to know.

If we were talking about SWEs, I'd say short tenures are now considered a pro, not a con. Likewise, staying too long at a company (say, 5+ years), seems to be considered a big red flag now. Exceptions given if company is FAANGMULA or similar caliber.

For a managerial or leadership position? I can't say, to be honest, but what you say makes sense. Then again, I'd say long tenures as a SWE ought to be considered a positive too (or at least not a negative), but it isn't, so...

I think the opposite. Usually a short (sub 2 years) tenure at a company means they're on the chopping block, bonuses didn't come through, refreshers weren't granted, stock options didn't continue, etc.

Or stock performance has been bad for the past 2 years? Or they got a bad team and its time to move on?

I mean, I agree, personally. But my encounters in the wild while interviewing, plus comments on Blind, etc. would indicate the wider consensus is that short tenures are preferable to long tenures.

How can you assume that? Especially when people are moving around constantly due to lack of promotions, compensation or recognition. It’s essentially religion at this point to hop every 2 years to “level up”.

Yup. It's common knowledge that in average Big Tech company culture, the easiest way to get a raise, better total comp, or a promotion is to get a new job every 2-3 years. Why would any engineer put himself/herself through a review process to get a measly sub-10% increase when they can get 20%+ by interviewing?

Speaking as someone who was recently outside of FAANGMULA type companies, but now finally got in...

Right now I'm just thankful where I am now. My compensation quadrupled coming from an investment bank. I actually suspect my compensation might actually be a bit lower than my peers at this company or those like it, relatively speaking, but at this point I don't care.

Combined with the fact that the work and project are super interesting, I could live with this compensation and title until I retire (in my late 30s now). I'm certainly in no hurry to put myself through leetcoding again, though to cover all my bases I probably ought to follow the principle of "a leetcode a day keeps unemployment at bay" sooner rather than later again.

How do you reconcile that your peers likely earn more than you, and perhaps then, you were underpaid for your (negotiation) skills of the same position?

I don't imagine the delta is extreme. I know the delta exists because post-hire, my manager implied it, and that he would do his best to close it. Part of it is my lack of negotiation skills as you say (also implied by my boss), and part of it is because my background is coming from an unsexy non-tech company (implied by the internal recruiter).

But even if the delta remains, I'm just plain thankful*. The amount I'm earning now is jawdropping for my wife and I. When I was interviewing around, we were half-joking how awesome it would be if I could replicate those stories you see on Blind about people doubling their compensation. That it quadrupled instead is shocking.

* Probably not a popular thing to say in tech circles, but my wife and I are Christian, and suffice it to say we are mindblowingly thankful to God for this. I don't endorse prosperity gospel, but I'm now earning more than we know how to utilize. We've committed to using at least some of it for good causes - my first month's salary was given wholesale to a charity trying to rescue/resettle/support Afghan refugees.

I'm astounded that FAANGs would want people who had already done a major, intensive leetcode interview to get in the door and had been working for 2-3 years would be asked to do another similarly-intense interview. I've commented on this before, but it seems as if there's not much trust or standardization in interview processes across the top of the industry. If there were, they wouldn't be asking engineers to grind leetcode again a few years later after already proving their mettle.

I believe the original intention of the leetcode interview is to let the employer gauge the thought processes, communication style, and problem solving approach of the candidate, more so than strictly the candidate's ability to get the absolute hyperoptimal solution.

But it has been corrupted. Demonstrating your thought processes, communication style, and problem solving approach is still a factor. But being able to quickly get the hyperoptimal solution in 20 minutes usually trumps everything else and often becomes the single make-or-break factor.

Sounds like your in a good place, contentment is better than chasing a never ending comparison to others.

Except for the first one these all seem like a good reason for leaving, why would you hold that against someone?

In wouldn’t hold it against them I wouldn’t just assume a short tenure is good thing and I’d want to ask for more info.

If I look at someone's linkedin and all their positions have been for <2 years it's a major red flag.

I mean, I agree, personally. But my encounters in the wild while interviewing, plus comments on Blind, etc. would indicate the wider consensus is that short tenures are preferable to long tenures.

To whom? Maybe to recruiters who get a commission for every person they bring on?

Interviewing SWEs, hiring managers, etc.

Apparently long tenures denote being an expert beginner, 1 year of experience repeated 5 times instead of 5 years of experience, complacency, laziness, things like that.

Again, I don't agree with this personally, but this seems to be the prevailing attitude. People like you and I being a minority.

There seem to be exceptions - the chief one being if you stuck around at a top company versus a mediocre one, that doesn't ding you much.

I work at one such "top company". Internal mobility is very, very easy and well-supported by the company (great business choice IMO). I am not sure if would even make sense to talk about "sticking around" at the company level. One can easily choose between 1x5yrs of experience, 5x1yr or anywhere in between.

(This is obviously orthogonal to your point about perceptions and attitudes, but I felt compelled to chime in.)

Isn't this just another way of saying that working for a mediocre company isn't a negative signal unless you stay there a long time?

Outside of FAANG, do you frequently find candidates who stick around that long at companies?

Yes, there are still many. The reasons can be varied. A lot of times the person might just like where they are doing what they do. Or at least are not unhappy enough to experience the disruption of looking for a new job.

Increasingly, talking to friends and colleagues who are also SWEs, the leetcode interview process is also seen as daunting and a huge barrier that can make someone think twice about switching jobs.

I'd say a FAANG (or similar tech company) engineer is more likely to move - and be capable of moving - than someone at a non tech company.

the leetcode interview process is also seen as daunting and a huge barrier that can make someone think twice about switching jobs

There's a lot of truth to this, but the result is that the inertia effect acts as a form of retention for FAANGs. This has only increased since they are losing their ability to maintain anti-poaching agreements.

Anecdotally, I've worked at the same small company for around 15 years now.

Base pay isn't FAANG competitive. But I get a decent percentage of new projects (7%), not all are successful though of course. It might fall short even with that factored in, but I've made enough such that I could have retired in my mid 30's if I didn't have kids.

I like what I do, I like who I work with, I get to work from home, and we have had a variety of projects over the years so things stay fairly fresh.

I might be able to make more if I landed a job at a hot new startup or FAANG. But I might also hate working there. Doesn't seem worth the bother given I'm pretty happy here.

> Outside of FAANG, do you frequently find candidates who stick around that long at companies?

Not the person you asked the question, but yes.

The most successful startups to IPO in the last 20 years include B2B companies like Service Now, Datadog, Crowdstrike, Workday, Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler etc. Count some others like MongoDB, AppDynamics, New Relic, Rubrik, Nutanix etc. These companies don't trend on Twitter, or are included in FAANG, but have had long periods of growth.

Many employees in those companies have stayed at those firms and have grown in their careers.

(Disclosure: I worked at AppDynamics for ~10 years).

you are saying like you are hiring

so you increase your engineers' salaries according to the market rate and they stay for longer than 2 years?

I think a lot of people would like to work under you too, consider leaving your recruitment email here, they will be glad to stay for more than 2 years

For me too. And I DO hire.

How do you reconcile that as a red flag with the massive raises people get from moving companies? Are you basically looking for someone who would turn down doubling their salary?

Yes, I know I do consider it: will this guy believe there's a right to raise or will he instead accept there's a duty to perform ?

If you want a company where merit is rewarded but taking your time is accepted as long as you dont whine each time a brilliant innovator is promoted, finding people who stay longer will yield you either innovators able to move upward quickly enough or solid maintainers who are satisfied specialising.

So:

Job 1 (Years 1-2): 100k/yr

Job 2 (Years 3-4): 200k/yr

Job 3 (Years 5-6): 400k/yr

Job 4 (Years 7-8): 800k/yr

Job 5 (Years 9-10): 1m/yr

Not sure any dev using this approach would need to work after year 10!

It's just like Bitcoin :p

Is this really a thing?

I quadrupled my compensation recently coming from a non-tech/tech-as-a-cost-center company to a FAANGMULA level company. However I don't foresee experiencing another huge jump like that ever again in my career.

If you're going from one FAANG to another FAANG, what are the odds you're going make six figure jump in compensation unless you're also moving up the ranks while doing so?

The parent was being sarcastic, it's not a real thing.

You have to be upleveling and counting on equity to grow but it is very much a thing.. check out levels.fyi

Not taking into equity for the purpose of discussion, but don't most SWEs top out at some level of "Senior SWE" title?

Well, if I think the person is just job hopping for salary and will only stay six months, then I'd pass them over. Or offer a six month contract if we really need them.

When I hire, I'd like to keep them for at least 2-4 years for the company's sanity.

I’m 18 months in to my current role. Strong performance reviews but promotion is based on tenure so I need to wait at least another two years to have a good shot. Or, I can go elsewhere and get the promotion (and remote work, which is what I really want).

If I move again, I plan to stay at least five years for the reasons in this thread.

But employers sometimes forget that even current employees are still operating in the jobs market.

If you have that issue at every company you work for it's a red flag. If you've had 3+ jobs and they all have tenures of <2 years it's a red flag.

This is just not true.

How is it not? How does anyone join a company and make any significant contributions in less than 2 years? How do you even become a leader within a company in less than two years? You just throw out all the relationships you have built every 2 years? It is a red flag.

What do you consider a significant contribution?

I spent 18 months in my first post-PhD job and in that time I drove consolidation of all of the tests (code base has acquired 6 frameworks over 20 years) into a single framework and got people actually writing new tests. I fixed parallel building which brought down the clean build time from 3 hours to 15 minutes. I did the work for a feature which was used as the major marketing selling point in that year. I got a very decent pay rise and bonus because of these things before I left.

Thanks for this example because so many people have 2 to 3 year of experience in a position with great experience and stories.

How someone working somewhere for 2 years not valuable? 2 years into a position and I already have a laundry list of deliverables.

It’s not like we are all working in a legacy codebase that never changes. I just don’t get it.

Even consultants swap clients often enough to where as far as work an impact goes it’s not more than a year usually.

At my company at least, we definitely prefer longer average tenures over shorter ones. Very short stays (say less than 2-3 years) and many hops implies you’re more interested in filling out your resume and jumping to the next pay raise than you are in making any meaningful contribution to the work our team is doing.

I would never consider someone staying at their current job for 5+ years a negative, unless it is accompanied by negative references from coworkers.

Where are you that 2-3 years is short? At any company I have been with, 3 years would make you an absolute veteran.

This is for the usual reason of not getting raises, so veterans tend to be very underpaid.

+1 for this. At six months At my current place I am in the top half of engineers for seniority and this has been one of the nicest places I’ve ever worked. At previous companies I’ve been in meetings where high level managers veto prospective hires the entire team wanted because they had been at their current company for “too long” where “too long” was 4 years without moving into management.

It’s not uncommon in my experience to hear engineers say they would view tenures of 2-3 years as a red flag for hiring other engineers, but the hiring managers who actually make the decision have always preferred short tenures of hopping around or staying at one place only if there’s a title change every ~2 years.

It makes sense since such people have more diverse experience and more adaptive, agile. They could bring new perspective to the team. I would say balanced approach is better - part of long tenure applicants and part of the hopping ones.

I get why engineers hate it. I am on a team where at 2 months, if we become fully staffed at some point, I will be in the top half of seniority between resignations and transfers to new teams.

It is quite concerning to see so much knowledge about how things work walk out the door and it is miserable if something goes wrong and nobody left knows it existed. So I get why engineers view a year as hit and run.

But yes, companies seem to interpret staying a year or two as evidence of growth/a highly desirable candidate.

Large traditional engineering companies have tenures like this. I joined a dev team working on CFD software and the average tenure was over 10 years. Made even less sense when by jumping I’m working on much less difficult code but getting paid a lot more.

Do you give your employees substantial raises every year as an incentive to stay and not look for a job elsewhere every 2-3 years? I was able to increase my salary by 400% in the past 2 years by moving around. But that doesn't mean I haven't made a huge impact on the products I've worked on for 1 year each, because I did.

Yep. I’m at just over double where I started 2 years ago by hopping twice.

~~Respect to your employer then, they're doing it right.~~ Edit: replied to the wrong person.

I don’t think you meant to reply to me as I am someone who must keep moving for raises.

I'm curious about your definition of huge impact? (esp. given the timescales.)

look up people that can accomplish a lot in short period of time, at least less than half a year or <2years, like geohot, Alyssa Rosenzweig or Mike Blumenkrantz and more

Another example for a 10x developer would be fabrice bellard. I've participated in this year's advent of code and usually needed dozens of minutes if not hours to solve examples. Then you see some of the videos from streamers on the leaderboard. they just quickly type out code. Sure, I hadn't practiced much and they had a lot of practice (doing AoC was my attempt of getting some), but they are definitely a two digit multiplier away from my performance. Of course, this doesn't directly translate to performance on the real job though, but there is a correlation I'd say.

Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKpViLcTp64

Have no idea who the others are, but I remember geohot from the various HN threads discussing their self-driving project: a safety-critical piece of software with important parts implemented in Python and running on an Android phone. When the NHTSA started asking some questions about safety standards compliance, geohot cancelled the project.

Finally it was open sourced and is currently sold with the following warranty: “[…]driver alertness is necessary, but not sufficient, for openpilot to be used safely and openpilot is provided with no warranty of fitness for any purpose.”

If that's what your take away is from my comment to the parent, you are missing the point, so much

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L3gNaAVjQ4&t=1903s | Ethereum startup story, George Hotz: Hacking the Simulation & Learning to Drive with Neural Nets | Lex Fridman Podcast #132

2. https://twitter.com/jinglejamOP/status/1310718738417811459 | an EVM to OVM transpiler

We had a guy who made a huge “impact” alright. He left almost three years ago and we’re still trying to unwind the mess he made.

He approached a couple members of my current team about the idea of open sourcing some infrastructure he worked on, and I think he was shocked to find that his efforts were not as appreciated as he thought. A bad copy of something better. He left shortly thereafter. I’m not sure if that was always his plan and he wanted to take some things with him, or if he was disheartened. But I know for sure that of he had left earlier he would have never heard that feedback and would have walked away feeling really good about his work.

For myself, I tend to want to know how we got here, wherever “here” is. I don’t need to have made a decision to learn from the consequences, but I do have to understand the decisions to some extent.

You 4x'ed your TC in 2 years?

It's very possible.

A lot of my old team at my previous company (tech-as-a-cost-center), including myself, left for Silicon Valley style tech companies or similar (tech-as-a-profit-center). All of us probably at least doubled our TC, some of us more (4x for me).

I’m sorry but it sounds like you’ve just been really lucky in where you’ve worked at.

The majority of engineering organizations are quite terrible at recognizing and promoting engineering talent. They’re fine with letting even good engineers leave as the cost of doing business. Looking at just the tenure and making an assumption about the individual sounds ridiculously backward and that’s pretty poor engineering leadership imo.

Couldn't agree more.

At my previous job, I spent some of my evenings and weekends to build internal tools to help members of the organization be more efficient, saving certain people on the team dozens of hours of work per week. I largely did it because I wanted to learn libraries and tools we weren't using on a day-to-day basis.

Instead of allocating more time for me to work on these projects or to work on improving our developer workflow, my reward was being assigned some of the most mind-numbing projects imaginable, tasks that quite frankly an entry-level developer fresh out of a bootcamp could accomplish. That wouldn't bug me if inefficiencies in the workflow wasn't such a bottleneck to the entire team.

Disheartened, I (and many other senior devs) applied elsewhere. One of the strongest devs sent a scathing email to leadership before getting let go. I managed to land a position with a great company that lets me jam and nerd out on cutting edge technology.

What a pleasure it must be working with someone who think important work is mind numbing and great company let him "jam" on "cutting edge" stuff (which I always translate as "dead in two years because too boring eventually for the jammers")

People work somewhere to make money... shocker! Unless you're some sort of non-profit or a real pioneer in a certain field (SpaceX?), your employees will be there mostly for the paycheck. People aren't interested in making a meaningful contribution if they're building a rehashed CRUD app for the 15th time.

I have heard of FAANG, but what is MULA?

Microsoft... Uber... LinkedIn... Another... ?

Total guess.

That is right, along with Airbnb

Always thought the "L" was for Lyft, but I suppose LinkedIn works too.

LinkedIn is basically Microsoft, so it's covered by the M.

I had no idea Lyft and Uber both paid as much as FAANG - the stock prices don’t seem to correlate (it’s sub-50 compared to the rest), nor did I think they paid as well as Google, Microsoft or Facebook.

Since when was this a thing? I guess I was under a rock when it came to this :)

It's been a while.

For that matter, I think Lyft, Uber, & Airbnb are capable of paying more on average than Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon at least. Or at least that's the impression I get on Blind.

"Sorry Fred, you meet, even exceed, all of our expectations for the position, however you prefer to stay too long, so fuck right off."

Seriously? This is absurd.

I think it depends on whether Fred continued to find opportunities for growth during his long stay.

If he can describe how he was meeting his career goals while also staying in the same position for nine years, then there's no reason to avoid him.

But if he spent the last six years stagnating, it might be worth giving extra scrutiny to how up-to-date his skillset is.

Replace “career goals” with “value to the business” and I would agree.

I don’t care about personal development to the same degree as making money. That’s what the business is about after all.

Also I don't think anyone will outright reject you for staying too long at one company.

What they'll do is see it as a red flag and dig into it and find out what the circumstances were. If they feel those circumstances are ok, then you're fine. If they feel they were not ok, then you'll get dinged.

Versus back when I started my career, it would have been a universally positive indicator, that would score you points over a "job hopper". Nowadays it seems the job hopper is in a better position.

I dunno, if I make a list of leaders I've worked with that I'd want to hire if I started my own thing... I'm sure keeping the machine alive and the paychecks flowing was near the top of their priority list, but most of their decisions seemed motivated by other things.

Improve safety for the users. Preserve the sanity of the ops team. Start actually competing for our business instead of relying on relationships with politicians. That sort of thing.

Most often these hireworthy behaviors correlate with bringing value to the business, but sometimes the business's values need correcting.

Right, but these are value adds to the business, rather than personal career goals, which is what I’m getting at (a business will assess your worth not on your career goals but what you are worth to the business, and personal career goals aren’t a great measure of that, unless you can craft such goals very carefully).

I guess I'm trying to saying that you should craft your goals that way. And if accomplishing your goals doesn't also count as adding value to the business, you should go find a company where it does.

I realize this is an abnormal perspective, but I think it's important.

I spent seven years at a company whose main talent was finding ways to sell software that nobody would use (fewer bugs that way). We would build relationships with politicians who needed to spend their budget in order to have it renewed next year at the same size, and sell them something that claimed to do whatever made them look good.

It took us lowly engineers a long time to find out what was going on, but one day somebody actually tried to use it and you could tell from the bugs that nobody before them had ever managed to make it work.

Corrupting politicians is profitable. It adds value to the business. Creating an R&D group to actually drive the industry forward? That's risky, and in the end, less profitable. But I respect the hell out of the people who managed to do it, business value be damned, and would hire them to smack me around from time to time if I were a CEO.

Everyone can tear down a straw man.

It's more along the lines of "Fred, you exceed all our expectations but we're worried that you haven't been keeping up with the trade skills in your area due to being in only one company and likely been way too cozy there to evolve your skills".

That means your interviews suck.

Agreed. It's too biased to jump to such conclusions early in the process.

By contrast, I have recently accepted a new position, and in almost every interview I was asked, with a negative connotation, why I had stayed so long (6 years) with my current employer.

In my opinion it can be a sign of loyalty, depth, engagement and responsibility among other things. I don’t understand how this can be viewed as a negative. Seems almost pathological to me to suggest that job hopping is preferred.

Very few companies increase their pay in line with market trends. If you’re at a company for 6 years, you’re likely getting paid undermarket rate. When I see someone doing that - I wonder, “are they not willing to go outside their comfort zone even when there are clear benefits?”

Personally - I’ve had no issues getting a job. I’ve job hopped consistently since I started working in 2013. I haven’t had a single job last more than a couple years. I will be looking for a new job in 2022 as well. I don’t expect anything bad to happen due to my hopping. It’s a norm within the industry.

If companies didn’t want this to happen then they’d work harder at retaining talent.

You do realize you are on HackerNews, where Paul Graham says it’s a negative trait for founders, start up workers, etc. So most companies that are growing or are looking to change directions will feel this way.

If you are at the same company people want to at the very least see growth. Positional or responsibility wise.

I rather hire someone with multiple 2-3 year stints, than someone with one 8 year job. But it’s only a small part of the hiring equation.

> I don’t see anyone being an effective leader by only sticking around for less than 2 years. Having tenures less than 2 years especially at senior roles doesn’t give a lot of positive feelings of leadership in my opinion.

This is an awful mindset and one wish would just get deleted forever from all the memory of all humans for good.

I've been trying to find a senior dev position for the last ~20 months and most gigs I only lasted 3 months and that was because all employers (except one) didn't adhere to the agreed upon contract because let's face it, how will I enforce it?

So I was left with a few CTOs asking me why am I job hopping and they didn't believe me that I busted my arse working to prove myself on every single gig I landed in the mentioned period but was given super unfair conditions and deadlines and was met with expectations that the most senior dev in their company couldn't adhere to.

So please, do consider that what you say is only one side of the coin. I don't know if it was bad luck or me emitting the wrong signals during interviews; likely the latter because Occam's Razor says so. But even if that's the case, I feel I didn't deserve the skepticism that was projected towards me. The interviewers came to the interview already assuming that I am a job hopper. It is not fair.

If you meet one person who's an asshole, they're probably an asshole.

If every person you meet is an asshole... Consider some self-reflection.

Have you considered that I had exit interviews and gathered actual feedback before generalizing?

Don't answer, it's obvious that you haven't.

It's also obvious that you didn't notice that my previous comment did contain self-reflection. I always seek the blame in myself first. That doesn't mean that blame is always in me however. Bad luck or poorly communicated expectations happen to all of us.

So chiming back in here a few days later since it will probably be just you that sees this...

Go read this comment chain again and consider if the way you commented here actually helped you at all.

I know for sure that I wouldn't hire you with the attitude you're expressing here (and unlike you, I'm a senior engineer who's involved in hiring) - some thoughts:

You seem to want to fight.

You're getting emotional and angry.

Things are "Obvious" to you. (So obvious!)

You're throwing off red flags left and right - To the point where I almost believe you that all your gigs suck, since I can't imagine many decent companies agreeing to hire you in the first place.

I'll take a generous approach, and assume you're really venting here, and acting in a way you wouldn't at work.

So take it or leave it, here's my piece of advice (and don't worry - I won't comment again).

---

There's a sliding scale for how people tend to judge others at work -

You can be EXCELLENT at the literal job, but if you're miserable in social interactions, you're going to be a mediocre employee at best.

Alternatively, you can be stunningly underwhelming at the actual job (even just plain bad, honestly), but as long as people enjoy doing it with you, you will also be a mediocre employee.

If folks have to pick between mediocre employees, people pick the guy they enjoy working with. This applies for basically all choices (who gets hired, who gets fired, who gets promoted, who gets bonuses, etc). Is it fair? No of course not, nothing is "fair".

Your best bet is to be positive on both sides of the scale - be somewhat enjoyable to work with, and do the job ok.

Your worst bet is to be painful to work with, and egotistical about how valuable you are.

If you can only pick one - prefer being easy to work with. It pays better dividends and is more transferable.

(I don't at all mind if you comment even further.)

And well, see, your comment here is the problem with virtual text-only communication. You start off spotting one or two signs that might point to a pattern that you recognize from your past experiences, and then every other ambiguous sign afterwards you interpret in favour of your preliminary conclusion. Yes, I was venting here on HN; I am calm-mannered and fairly normal guy in all work settings -- this has been said to me many times. I am a professional, and the last time I raised my voice (or were conflict-y in general) in a work meeting was at least 7 years ago.

Let me also remind you that I am referring only to a fairly recent period in my career (less than 2 years) which spans 20 years in total.

Can't fault you for rushing to conclusions given how the chats here went. But I get sad when I spot people doing it regardless.

I am having difficulties accepting that you're taking a generous approach when you tell me that I give off red signs left and right, which by itself is a generalization. If you truly were generous you'd assume that I have sort of a PTSD (which I absolutely do have, sadly) from toxic employers that I did misjudge so it's also at least 50% my fault for working with them and getting some traumas out of those experiences (which then make me less desirable because I became jumpy).

That becomes a self-perpetuating cycle at one point: you get so used to toxic people that you start reacting violently and negatively early in the process which can and will turn off legitimately positive and constructive employers. Had that happen to me as well, twice, and I hope that I have taken my lessons from it.

And this is the problem for me here:

> Go read this comment chain again and consider if the way you commented here actually helped you at all.

I should give positive benefit of the doubt but none is given to me. Compare this to school bullying: you have done nothing bad to anyone, get bullied excessively anyway, then one day erupt and smack somebody in the face who completely deserves it, then eat all the blame? I will refuse to accept blame in such a scenario.

So my apologies for previously negative tone but in your comment here you leaned waaaaaay too far in a negative direction and I can't in clear conscience agree with what you said. I had my faults (likely still have some of them) but you did fail to consider that I was "bullied" and at one point stopped giving a frak. That can happen to anyone and it's very easy to sit on a moral high ground when it never happened to you -- or imagine that you would never react like this had you been in my place. I am very skeptical on that last point. I've seen very calm and almost phlegmatic people turn into raging aggressors given the right shitty conditions in life. You're not immune as well, I am sure.

---

Going to the second half of your comment, I get what you're saying and I always preferred to be nice to work with and not necessarily super excellent in what I do -- although I keep trying every day; that's why I picked programming ever since 12 years old and I am still doing it now at 41 y/o; it's passion, it's not only money.

But I do get sad when people who only read how I got a little bitter from past experiences immediately jump to conclusions. :(

Critical thinking and good self-reflection on your side would have told you that you might be rushing into judging. Still, I can't take that away from you and I would not even if I could.

This comment of mine is also not strictly positive but at one point it gets hard to be peaceful and calm when you feel people are claiming things about you that many others have told you are not true (and again, I do my very very best not to only utilize my own judgement which is of course skewed; ego and all, as we all know, but to ask for other people's feedback).

This is my more level-headed take. You can do with it as you please, I believe I expressed myself much better this time around.

(EDIT: If you are curious, go through my comment history quickly. I am not the most politically correct person -- and never will be -- but I don't go around attacking people or jump at them.)

Although a wonderfully pithy platitude this doesn't tell the whole story. Assholes often congregate in groups because they reinforce and enable each others' negative tendencies, so if you consistently meet a lot of them then it can also mean that you're at least an OK person that's bad at selecting friends, coworkers, or places to live.

People that exhibit bad behavior in peer groups that tolerate it love trotting this line out because it lets them invalidate others' valid criticisms of them.

I’m sorry but I fully stand by what I wrote. Seeing many jobs with short tenure indicates something is wrong, either the person is too hard to please or the person isn’t good at their job. I will most certainly pass on that candidate unless there’s an extraordinary reason not to.

Why are you not entertaining the third possibility though? That the person might have had shitty luck a few times in a row?

1 or 2 short gigs is bad luck. A resume filled with short gigs indicates that the person probably has issues. I don't need to take a chance on hiring this person where there are dozens upon dozens of qualified candidates with better grades of resume.

Sorry, but this is reality. The next job you get, I suggest you tough it out for 3 or 4 years or more to show that those short gigs aren't the norm.

Sigh, there is another person who knows what I did and why, better than I do.

Oh well, I tried.

(And by the way it was 3 shitty gigs. No idea why you somehow draw the line at 2.)

You don’t seem to understand. No one owes you a job. It doesn’t matter what their reasons are.

Is it fair that you get discriminated against because of your claimed bad luck? No. But that is the reality of the situation. You need to accept this instead of whining about it. But a bunch of short term jobs means you’re either a job hopper or you have been fired very quickly many times. To be honest, assuming you’re a job hopper is the better of the two assumptions.

Instead of trying to fight it, I suggest you figure out a way out of it. Get a new job and stick with it for a longer period of time. Or don’t include some of the jobs on your resume when you apply for a new job. Or put on your resume that you had short term contract positions and now you’re looking for permanent positions.

I have over 25 years of experience. I need to do leetcode every night so that I can compete against kids half my age for the same job. Is that fair? No. I have over quadruple their experience. But it’s the reality of the situation. So instead of whining about it, I’m studying leetcode every night so that I can find a new job.

I suggest you take the same attitude.

> I need to do leetcode every night so that I can compete against kids half my age for the same job. Is that fair?

How does practicing leetcode help you do your job, or do you just practice it for interviews?

It’s for interviews.

Saying that I am "whining" when I tried to ask for an alternative take on a seemingly suspicious situation clearly shows who is "whining" here and who came for a discussion. Saying "it doesn't matter what your former employers' reasons were" is also making me doubt you are even interested in discussing at all or just came here to throw your opinions at me. We no longer live in slavery, you know?

I do most of the things that you said I should. I understood that I got through a bad period, realized that parts of what I do would only perpetuate it since I became negative and it started showing in interviews (and that means that some of them got cut short because of it -- and yes that absolutely was my fault). But then I changed things around and now I am in a better place. Literally and figuratively.

It would help you in your life and work to judge less or, failing that, judge in not such a quick manner as you did here.

In what way were they not sticking to the agreed contract? Because whether people view you leaving as reasonable or not is going to hinge a lot on what you mean by that

I was promised -- and signed a contract with that language -- that my job will be strictly technical and I will not be made responsible for project planning, prioritization or coaching.

I have zero problems doing these but I was going through a rough patch and needed a job that was more merciful to my mental health. I was realistic about my situation and communicated the right expectations early. I specifically asked for that, was promised that, signed a contract that said that, and they still turned back on their word (and signature) no later than my 3rd week with them.

In retrospect there were red flags from both sides (from the employer and from myself) but they weren't as obvious to me back then. Oh well, we live and learn.

I’ve never had a same manager for longer than 2 years in my entire 14y career. In fact average is around 1 year. Even if they stay at the same company they sure move teams around frequently. Directors and above tend to stay for longer.

I came here to say this as well I was at a company for 6 years. Much more after often I would see managers hop every 2-3 years and be the one to get raises and promotions.

I have been in the final stages of a interview and reject an offer for personal reasons, had the manager say to me “I’m looking for people who are here to stay and make a career, so let me know if you reconsider”. He had been a manager for a year and half… I found out not to long ago he left to become a Sr. Manager else where.

These rules around tenure are silly. If you have impact in 2 years or less that’s all that matters.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com