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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing wrong with job hopping, and I've seen no indication that patterns affect anything.

The fact is, we are all working for a wage. With the death of unions, and right to work, that's about all we're working for, personal motivation aside.

If a company is willing to pay more to hire you than your company is willing to pay to keep you, take it. Only suckers stick around out of some loyalty. See how loyal the company is when times are tough. In my personal experience, the tenured, high paid 40 and 50 year olds are the first to get the axe.

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I fully agree. This loyalty myth is perpetuated by employers to discourage leaving in the face of poor wage adjustments and working conditions. We should work for the employer which treats us best. Always. That's how jobs work. Loyalty has nothing to do with it. If an employer has issues with a short stint of mine, I want nothing to do with them. They're clearly looking for people of which to take advantage.

I challenge you to find a company publicly expounding the idea of loyalty. The idea is actually perpetuated by old-school employees that are still drinking the koolaid.

In one sense, a company is nothing but a collection of people. So of course these attitudes are being perpetuated by people. It's the people in charge who are perpetuating them, and one could argue that the company leadership is the company. Of course, they won't advertise this publicly.

So an interviewer is not allowed to ask why you left a job?

They can certainly ask. If they have an issue with a short stint, then I walk.

It's less about loyalty to your current company, and more about the appearance of loyalty to your next company.

It's not about loyalty. It takes time for a new employee to be productive, especially in senior and leadership roles where understanding the context of the company is important, and building relationships is key to you performing your role. If you're gonna leave after a year it's not worth it to invest 6 months or more on ramping you up.

If companies don't want people to leave after short stints they shouldn't incentivize and even reward it so intensely.

Fuck I don't want to leave after a short stint either. But when the market is shifting fast as it has been for... my entire career, and people are getting hired in at 20%, 40% more than my salary while I'm on my third 4% CoL adjustment then yeah Imma bounce.

Workers didn't create this situation, companies did. They can figure out the consequences. Having a resume full of short stints never seems to have done me any damage and I don't buy this propaganda that it does.

Right to work didn't kill unions, Europe has right to work and unions do just fine, California doesn't have right to work and software engineers still don't unionize. Right to work is just a ruse trying to make you focus on the wrong thing.

I think there's a matter of scale.

I won't hire someone who has been at 5 companies in the last 3 years, for example, unless they were explicitly a contractor.

But if you're jumping every 18-24 months, that's expected in your early career. When people are talking about job hopping today, it is contextual to that.

Managers should look at a longer average stay, though there is no shame in leaving a bad situation early or staying in a great situation. (I actually don't yet know what the right timing is for a manager role, honestly, though I'd assume 24-36 months from what I've seen.)

Well of course you only see the times the employer axes - but you never even hear about the times they don't.

I worked at the same company for a decade. There were three times the company did mass layoffs, and every time it trimmed a ton of long term employees.

Yes but you might be surprised how often "I think we need to do layoff" conversations happen and how often that a leadership team goes in to bat for keeping people for as long as financially possible.

I understand there are shitty companies. But if you're judging just by the "harshness of layoffs" you don't have the full picture.

Though to your point about laying off long term employees, depends on the country but it's often cheaper to cut shorter term ones (as they have less entitlements accrued, if that's a thing in your country). The other reason long term employees may be cut is they have accumulated too much in terms of small percentage pay bumps over the years and you end up with a team where 1 person is earning 50-100% more than the person next to them, and it's just an obvious cut.

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