ie its never a bad time
That being said, I interview engineers at a larger tech company. I view it as a negative for a candidate to have multiple short term stints (less than a year).
There, now that number is 1.
Do you mind explaining why? I would personally be seen like that by you, but I personally consider it a good thing that I was able to "rise" so quickly in my career. I'd like to hear your take on this if possible.
I'm curious what you would think about someone who's stayed at one company (same role, same team, maybe some minor increase in responsibility and rank) for 5 years? 10 years?
Would you view someone like that better or worse than someone who has multiple n <= 2 year stints during that time?
My observation recently, having been through interview loops and having stayed at my previous company for 7 years, is that longer tenures seem to be perceived as bad these days at tech companies...possibly worse than multiple short stints. Perceptions of expert beginner syndrome, 1 year of experience * n years instead of n years of experience, laziness, lack of motivation, etc. being typical reasons given.
It depends. A long tenure means I will check in the interviews whether you were stagnating and just killing time, or growing and delivering on major improvements.
One of the best people I worked with spent 10 years at a very minor company, but the work they spoke about in the interview was extensive, and they took on a huge amount of development work across our entire company once they joined.