High performers job hop when they can't find a high performance culture

What about consultants? I currently am on a "mission" of 1 year 3 months, but really the original assignment was 6 months, which has been prolonged 2 months, 3 months (really, with a change of function), and now (maybe, to be approved) until the end of the year, which would make it 1 year 8 months. But that's exceptional. And really, these were ~10 months in one function, then 5 months (for now) in another part of the company (double consultancy ... sigh). So in at least one interpretation I haven't held down a job for a year in ~4 years. Of course, I did have the same employer for 7 years. But I see my actual employer, and my manager there, maybe 2 times per year.

Because holding a single mission at a customer as a (probably expensive) consultant for a year ... I'd say my average is 8 months. My record is 2 years 7 months.

My counterpoint is that it takes time for someone to become productive in a tech job. In my pocket of the industry, I'd say as long as 3-9 months. In fact, in that time the employee is a time sink: you get less done as you're still onboarding the employee.

So if they are going to leave after a year, that's a big disincentive to hire, regardless of how they are at problem solving.

Sure, there's good reasons to leave quickly, but if these stack up, I'm inclined to pass.

I manage a team and hire people so I have an incentive to look for people who don’t job hop and have conversations with peers on candidates around this.

I find that I can’t bring myself to care too much to evaluate people on if they are “job hoppers”. Every place I’ve worked at that wants to avoid it based on what I am told by my leaders and HR, also doesn’t give raises even keeping up with inflation unless you manage to get promoted. And they usually have a million reasons to not promote someone come yearly reviews.

This industry incentivize job hopping and you’re better off treating employees as a stream and figuring out how to manage project estimates and knowledge transfer around that.

Obviously doesn’t apply if your company really puts in effort to maintain employees long term, but you’re in an exceptional case if that is true

Yep, I very occasionally see natural '10x' types who can jump into any codebase or business.... and more often see '10x' types who learn the environment more slowly but then speedrun using their other skills once they are situated. Latter bet is safer, a lot of the bigger fun is year 2, 3.

For job hoppers, I often see folks who don't realize they are leaving behind landmines for their colleagues. They haven't had as much of a chance to learn from their mistakes. They learn from inheriting, but often not at a 'senior' level of decision making.

So we hire fewer and slower, and work to maintain a team that values doing well at their craft and building ambitious things that take time.

It entirely depends on the trajectory of the hopping. For example, a year at local company, then two years at a fortune 500, then hopping to FAANG or FAANG-adjancent company could be a positive sign.

Seniority of the candidate is another thing to consider. Job hopping every 1.5 to 2 years in the first 5 or so years of one's career is normal and often expected among US software engineers. However, having a bunch of short stints later in one's career, in my experience, has translated to weaker hires.

>Or do you want someone who's going to stick around a bit longer, on the basis that much of the value of someone in a job is actually domain knowledge specific to the business and the code, rather than transferrable skills?

Do the incentive structures at your company match this? If they do, thats great, but I've worked at places who don't even give raises that beat inflation and still wonder why people leave within 1-3 years.

Typically what I've seen of job hopping, is more often than not their previous employer simply didn't have a proper incentive structure to keep a good engineer around very long. Alot of people leave when they realize they'll never get more than a 3-4% raise, for example.

If you desire employees to stay around for awhile and really learn the product and business deeply, it needs to be incentivized properly

As a job hopper that's done well for myself; Realistically, I don't want a job with that much stress. If timelines are tight, it's usually management's fault (and I can say this... I've been in management in many positions). In my experience, they don't compensate you for it at all, and you can easily (at least for me) find a job that pays more with less stress. Take that as you will.

I've also been in the hiring manager role and have no problem with job hoppers. I find them to generally be more ambitious.

Rockstar ninja Not Invented by Me syndrome. Implements new tech stack, uses obscure technologies, or redoes things in nonstandard ways (usually with lots of patches and hacks but without documentation) to create a platform only they can maintain but then move on and sticks everyone else with the "check" of support and extensibility.

> I would change jobs, but I hate interviewing and everything else in the process

Networking helps. Who did you work with in the past that meets your standards... Get in touch, ask them where they're working and if they know of any openings.

Often times you skip at least some screening BS, you may also get more of the interview time set for them convincing you to join, rather than trying to see if they want you. Depends on the place and the strength of recomendation.

My satisfaction in my personal life is definitely what keeps me happy to grind away at my workplace (which isn't really too bad, but the will to take risks to actually improve seems "thin").

It can't last forever, though, so there's an inevitable reckoning on the horizon.

> I'm not satisfied at work

I feel this somewhat but I’ve realized it’s somewhat seasonal and more a matter of perspective.

I’ve had good times and bad times at work and they just come and go. During the good times I double down on my work. I put in more because I get more out. During the bad times I focus on personal projects. I do the job as a professional but don’t waste time trying to knock it out of the park when I know I won’t.

I just look for fulfillment where it comes naturally and don’t try to squeeze it out where it doesn’t.

High performance people are sometimes pushed out by lower performance coworkers who feel threatened. Also, B managers hire C tech leads, who hire D ICs.

Another trap to avoid nearer to the high performance side is allowing elitism or tiers of snobbery. Hire people who are regular cool or who you can at least tolerate.

This is confirmation bias.

Everyone decides for themselves and you own your career and growth though.

Don't forget that job hopping is still the easiest way to get a significant raise...

I've gotta ask, what happened in the early 2000's to make that your milestone?

It's funny that you didn't mention Google. They used to be "the" techies tech company.

Depends on the average performer. I know a high performer who was actually intimidated by the high performance of other high performers, so the average average performer may feel exposed or unworthy or a level of guilt at internally perceived lack of contribution in comparison.

Human psychology is a funny thing.

> Using length of previous employments as a metric in ascertaining someone's skills isn't worth it.

It depends on the nature of the type of labor needed. If an employer needs a warm body, then evaluating length of previous employments might be worth it. If an employer needs a high performer, then it might not be worth it.

In the places I've worked, skill wasn't the primary metric. You had to be good enough but working well in the team was more important. As long as you met the minimum skill requirements for the position, we prefer people who increase overall team efficiency.

We tend to avoid "rockstar developers" in my current company because many wouldn't be happy here.

I happened to be a "rockstar" right now because my skills and culture are an ideal match. My team is small and does a lot, so we really can't afford to hire the wrong person. Better to leave the position open.

well....yea you can be high performance and _just_ focus on what you're interested in, but agree - pushing yourself to be leadership without being a supervisor to _build_ 'the high performing culture that can deliver something great' is really special

Good question. For context, I am a high performer in a low performing team with a lower performing manager. The company has rated me as “highest talent” which only one other person on our 50+ department received. To answer your question, I tried what you suggest: influence.

Turns out, people are often intimidated in talent when they have no desire to replicate it - this is especially true for management. Even if I was able to influence others, there’s nobody left to influence me.

Not to mention, it’s makes your workload significantly more when you’re the only one researching things, asking question, improving things, etc.

So, in short, yes you can be talented and elect to quit rather than influence.

Yes - if someone wants you to fix their broken process or company they can explicitly ask you to and pay you suitably for it, otherwise there are plenty of other places for high performers to choose to spend their valuable time.

I spent years in a toxic culture trying to "influence it". I managed to inspire my team but it was just an outlier island in a corporate ocean I couldn't change. Ultimately the stress and exhaustion resulted in medical depression and I needed to leave for health reasons.

Knowing whether a culture / management team can be influenced is a skill of it's own.

I'd think that high performers would develop that skill fairly quickly. If they're job hoping they'll learn to sniff out the signals.

For example: if they say they encourage change for the better, but continually overload those who may be able to influence the changes with day to day work, then those managers / that culture will be resistant / allergic to influence.

If Sprint X is dedicated to learning and improvement but always seems to be full of last minute bug fixes, testing, overflow work, then even if influence is on their menu, they ain't got the ingredients to cook it up.

Useful blog post about this sort of situation: https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/

> Are you really high performance if you can assess the situation but elect to quit instead of influence it?

So - high performance aside, this is the route I took in my last company. I felt the engineering team was good - great, even - but the engineering manager left and I moved into that post because I felt that an external hire might risk the team's currently effectiveness. It was a big change though; IC to 25-person engineering team across multiple products, and in a regulated environment. It's not done lightly, and given people can (or could) get paid loads for doing IC work, moving is also a good choice.

You really think The New Guy can change an entire corporate culture through sheer force of will? You are literally the lowest person on the totem pole. You have ZERO social status, ZERO influence. If the rest of the org/company is culturally aligned around seriously bad practices, you are going to sound like an crazy person, even if you are the only sane one in the room. You are simultaneously Sisyphus and Cassandra.

Do not agree. Unless they cannot stay in place for more than a couple of months I don't really care. People put too much weight on having bodies fill their seats and not very much weight on the quality of the output.