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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

I always find these articles a bit blind.

If the guys hoped a job every 6 month for the past 4 years then they've been hired _every_ _single_ _time_ they hopped. People hire job hoppers. If they didn't then they'd (by definition) stop job hopping. Sure maybe after the 10th hop it'll catch up to you but by that point (in this scenario) you've had the equivilant of 10 14.8% raises which IIUC is a total ~404.6% raise. So you're now "stuck" at a job making 4x what you did 5 years ago.

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In my experience someone job hopping every 6 months isn't usually doing so because they've found a better role or better compensation. That's usually, but not always, a result of under performance. Most companies are reluctant to fire someone within the first 6 months and it can take that long to gather the evidence necessary to avoid a wrongful termination suit. To me it's less a sign of ambition and more a sign of someone who interviews well but doesn't work well.

In this market there are always companies who will hire someone who job hops, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

> Sure maybe after the 10th hop it'll catch up to you but by that point (in this scenario) you've had the equivilant of 10 14.8% raises which IIUC is a total ~404.6% raise.

10 raises at 14.8% each hop is 1.148^10 or 3.976 not 4.046

But still, you end up at about 4x

It's crazy what a 14-year bull market capped off with a WFH tech-boosting pandemic will do to SWE salary expectations. In these conditions, market rate outpaced wage increases at most companies, so you would need to hop to keep up.

However under normal circumstances job hopping will plateau pretty quickly, and if you don't have a promotion it starts to look pretty bad to hiring managers. I certainly would never hire a staff engineer who was not promoted to L6 equivalent in a company with a strong tech reputation.

what's really hilarious is that I followed a job hop every year and my job comp actually increased 6x over 4 years

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