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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

> 4. Why do you change jobs so often (so rarely)?

If an engineering candidate's last few positions have all been about a 1-year vest, that's definitely going to be on my mind. I'd prefer to build a coherent, highly-effective development team who can see us through the whole lifecycles of this and successive projects -- not what might as well be fly-by-night gig contractors, tossing less-aligned check-off sprint deliverables over the wall.

I don't currently have a standard way to ask about this, and would play it by ear. Maybe their answer is that there was something about recent positions that they didn't like, or maybe they've been doing early startups, or maybe they were junior but just now hitting their stride as experienced and know what they want and how to perform, or maybe they give what seems like a dishonest answer, or maybe they're only looking for particular kind of short-term transactional engagements (which we might need).

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I mean most people will just tell you what you want to hear, but the reality it's usually about the following things:

  Pay - Almost always, wages don't keep up with your progression, and never with the market.
  Progression - Not just promotions, but being given the interesting work to run with.  Once someone sees you as junior, it's easier to go somewhere else to be treated with a bit more gravitas.
  Morale - Quite a lot of tech leadership is terrible.  Various problems make people sad.
  Skill - They might actually be terrible / or skilled but terrible at actually finishing anything.

It makes a lot of sense to hop about until you find a company that constantly rewards you, but the reality is they barely exist and even in the top companies there's hopping about for the same reasons.

I'm in the UK and spent many years as a contractor. It was never a case of not caring, or not wanting a long term home, and since most of the work and platforms were similar org to org, not understanding longer term consequences of decisions doesn't entirly apply.

Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems.

> Mostly, the negativity just writes off ambitious people. Though it might make sense given your org, like others, might just have the same reward problems.

Or the person has unreasonable expectations. On top of that, they are bad at selecting a job that will make them happy. In any case, I would not hire then either. Maybe if I just had some boring app that needed some maintenance I would hire them, but that is not what I do.

Fair comment. It depends what you think of the market.

I'm in the UK. My summary of the British market is most devs are earning $50,000 - $100,000, with a few tier 2 and even less tier 3 companies, that don't actually offer SV level RSUs.

Basically there's not a lot of spots to "guess right".

Historically there's a large contractor market that's way more lucrative net than anything excep tier 3, of which you can probably count on your fingers.

Personally, I try to build better orgs to keep these folks happy, but each to their own. :)

> [snip] On top of that, they are bad at selecting a job that will make them happy. In any case, I would not hire then either. [snip]

I'm not sure that's entirely fair to say. If a company makes a few bad hires, are they necessarily bad at selecting candidates that will make them happy? Or is it also that there are other factors, like lack of availability of first-choice candidates, possibly an inexperienced hiring manager, maybe pressure from C-suites to hire a friend of theirs regardless of qualifications, and perhaps the regrettable, but unavoidable, truth that a bad hire is more than likely going to misrepresent themselves and social engineer their way into an offer?

Personally, I think it's a little unfair to make the assumption that someone who's switched around a handful of times and/or gives "morale" as a reason for leaving is bad at picking jobs that will make them happy, but I'm just some guy on the internet- I don't really know anything about anything.

Wow. I feel incredibly targeted by that list.

I will almost always ask why the candidate left their last few positions (or is looking to leave their current role at a minimum). Rarely does a candidate give an answer that cements the "definitely hire" decision, but I've had a few talk themselves out of a likely offer. This typically takes the shape of story-telling where everyone else at three different companies was too blind to see their obviously superior talent and brilliance or three companies in a row where everyone was just too difficult to get along with. In both cases, while it's theoretically possible to be true, there's only one common element across all three companies and they're sitting across from me...

If the answer comes back as mostly pay/opportunity: I get it; that's a real problem in a lot of places and it causes a lot of ambitious juniors to change companies frequently; no concern.

If I am interviewing someone with 5-7+ years of experience and I don't see 1 single job with at least 3 years, I would mostly pass on that candidate unless I know them already. I dont care what your reasons are if you couldn't hold on to a single job for that long and you are now 5-7+ years in the industry.

On the flip side, if you are entry level (< 3 years of experience), I will give you a pass if you can answer the question reasonably. We all know that the best way to get a salary bump is to get a new job and early on, it is more ok than later on in your career.

> I don't currently have a standard way to ask about this

Typically I don't ask about the overall trend, but ask a bit about each of their last few jobs including their reason for leaving each. (This works regardless of whether they've had many or few jobs.)

Then you can decide whether you think there's a worrying trend (e.g. talking disparagingly about every single one of their many < 1- year jobs) or generally reasonable reasons for moving on.

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