I don’t think SWEs realize just how many companies out there will look at a resume of a job hopper (even if there is 10 years at FAANG, say 2 at each) and outright reject the candidate on those grounds.
They are job hopping because they want high level compensation and maybe a position on an high-impact team, instead of being sidelined and powerless against the disrespect of their manager.
Your company can make those work together.
I’m not saying every job hopper is the right hire. I am offering a reason they get hired anyway (availability!) and leave anyway (respect and $$).
(And it didn't fit any rational objection I could think of, if they'd actually looked at the resume, beyond triggering on a keyword.)
I think a root problem is that many companies are bad at hiring, and many of those get confidently bad at it. In institutional emergent behavior terms, as well as individual actor terms.
Precisely. And who are we kidding? I know a lot of people that have performance objectives to grow $ or cut $. I don't know anyone who has a comp clawback for making bad hires.
Spending too long (vague) consulting for one company doesn't measure your competencies or value you bring to the team. I bet they just needed a reason to knock you out and shortlist the hiring manager's preferred candidate who they don't know personally, but know via close friend referral.
This can also dovetail with illegal hiring discrimination: when there's an exec/manager who doesn't want to hire women, people with kids, people likely to feel pressure to have kids soon, military veterans, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc... it's really easy for those resumes to be among the ones quickly discarded, with or without pretext. It's plausibly deniable, because of all the random declines of good resumes.
They're screening job-hoppers as a "rule of thumb" that shrinks the candidate funnel at the cost of losing out on 100x programmers or 1-10x programmers that can commit to 2y.
I don't get the cost-benefit other than time and a lack of need for 100x programmers.
The talent view is that this candidate is in demand by peers, and it's the candidate's choice to put in a full 2y and leave early before vesting.
Scratching someone out for being an alleged job hopper on the surface is pre-mature optimization for hiring talent. What is your concern that you can't mitigate? e.g., call their referrals, backload their comp, etc.
the best analogy I can give is that at work I (and many companies) are looking for a marriage, not a one-night stand. no matter what your technical provess is, it takes a while for you to learn the domain and get gelled with the team. While this is happening, we are all putting a significant effort to make this happen. if you then turn around and leave the entire has wasted a whole bunch time/effort and even if you are some “rock star” SWE we lose
Why can't you address this with mitigants I mentioned? It sounds like you do some of that with "other non-$ comp" (mandatory PTO, parental leave,...) that's use it or lose it, but those are table stakes these days.
I love the idea of thinking about a long term marriage and contracting accordingly, but at some point it's a leap of faith.
Your bias has a presumably unforced handicap. Losing that 100x programmer may not matter to your business/personal goals to make GOOD wealth accumulation, but it will hurt your changes to go from GOOD to GREAT outcomes.
How do you handle retention, once you "marry" an employee?
If the manager retired, would the company keep nurturing that?
- great team
- competitive compensation
- maternity / paternity leave
- mandatory pto
The compensation one is the one that most companies get wrong for retention. It seems most companies say they're "competitive" (within some unspecified tier). And they may be at hiring time, but a frequent complaint is that companies don't keep the compensation competitive. (Netflix famously being an exception.)