Job Hopping

[NeoSneth]

Are people still doing this?

I have several former colleagues that i see changing jobs every 1-2 years. Most of them are only moving laterally. Maybe this makes sense in your 20's, but these are people leader roles. It seems exhausting to me. I know people think job hopping is a good way to increase compensation, but I am not seeing massive shift in roles for these people. Many of them end back up at my company at the same or lower grade role.

I get a sense that these people are mostly imposters, and once they've been found out they jump ship. I know our executive rotation program also reinforces this is what makes good leaders. From my experience it trains you to think you are great strategist, while the reality is it adds no value.

 

[kernow]

It's usually hopping before they get found out, then they manage to join another job as a head of department and fuck that up too despite getting a payrise. I've never changed jobs when I have one already, will stay there unless it fucking sucks eventually.

Witnessed this 1-2yr thing many times

 

[kernow]

What also annoys me is the whole 'stepping down' thing. Here have your £1.8M payoff for fucking up british gas, now please 'step down' and go fuck up somewhere else. If I fuck up, I don't get asked to step down.

 

[StevenK]

What also annoys me is the whole 'stepping down' thing. Here have your £1.8M payoff for fucking up british gas, now please 'step down' and go fuck up somewhere else. If I fuck up, I don't get asked to step down.

Gardening leave is a beautiful thing, though

 

[The Chief]

I actually switched jobs coming up in 5 years ago now. I was unhappy with the employer I had and a friend let me know about a position with another company. I ended up interviewing and was offered the job. Initially it was a slight pay cut but over the years I’ve become quite good at what I do and now run my own department. I’m making more than the previous job would have ever paid, have a lot of flexibility, good benefits and am not under the corporate thumb.

That said, hopefully I’ll retire at the company I’m currently with. And yes I plan to retire early, because fuck working until old age.

 

[mjmjr25]

I get a sense that these people are mostly imposters, and once they've been found out they jump ship.

Bingo bango bongo.

Impressive resume, good people skills at interview, good salesman...no work ethic or follow-through. Takes around 12-36 months to figure it out - once they know they've been figured out, they get out before they get forced out.

I've been at my job 27 years. I've seen both scenarios play out. Existing people leaving, no follow-through, smoke and mirrors. New people come in and can tell in 2-3 interactions if they are dope or nope. Some of them come back in different roles, occasionally similar level of responsibility, or sometimes lower.

The trick is if they can stay away a good 5 years; between changeover in HR, or just goldfish memories, they get brought back on with the same work ethic and skills.

 

[Neo Alec]

I get a sense that these people are mostly imposters, and once they've been found out they jump ship. I know our executive rotation program also reinforces this is what makes good leaders. From my experience it trains you to think you are great strategist, while the reality is it adds no value.

A lot of the job hopping I see in my job are in upper management. A new person with "Chief" "Vice" or "Manager" on their resume someplace else comes in like a bull in a china shop, wrecks things, and then moves on to the next place in 1-2 years. I'm used to having a new boss with a different agenda every couple of years. I don't envy their jobs -- It's basically an impossible task with no real endgame other than failure. "Imposters" indeed. That's why the last couple times I was offered a promotion to one of those positions in my company I turned it down. I want the stability (where I am right now I'm difficult replace) but in upper-management I'll be replaceable and susceptible to the next round of layoffs.

CEO's and managers just jump from one place to the next.

 

[skate323k137]

I am in a tough spot at the moment looking for a job, partly due to job hopping being a thing / habit of folks, and subsequently being perceived as a potential job hopper. This is not entirely to blame of course, by any means, but it hits home anyway.

Background: I left my job of 12 years for better pay and work/life balance about 3 years ago. The new gig treated me well for the first year or so. It became clear about 18 months in that they would never invest in the security/compliance they were insisting we attest to, but I kept that job and found a new one before leaving, which was right before I hit the 2 year mark. This was about a year ago. I found what looked to be a really promising job; it was more interesting technically, with a better (or so it would appear) company, and really solid benefits. Unfortunately they treated me like shit the entire time. In my IT career I've never had a bad performance review, let alone been fired from a tech job, but they decided to let me go 11 months in for "performance" right before bonus season, and just months after breaking their much bragged about "no layoff" policy. Never mind that my supervisor and the head of customer engineering doesn't even like engineering, and interrupted me in our very 1st meting to explain that she "...only got a degree in engineering because teachers told me I was good at math and science. My husband is the one who actually likes this stuff." At one point she made me re-do an entire setup of our team labs that already worked, because "[the labs] working isn't the point, I want you personally to do every single task." Yeah, it went swimmingly with her

/vent

So right now, my last 2 jobs are a combined ~3 years, with the one before that being 12 years straight. And even being in IT security, I have not had a single interview in the last few weeks. I'm keeping my head up, but damn.

On principle I am much more about the right job than overall pay, when I went from the job prior to the 12 year stretch, I actually took a 30 or 40 percent pay cut in the beginning. I more than made it up over the years though.

 

[city41]

At my last job I interviewed around 200 candidates. Seeing a candidate with several 3-12 month jobs back to back was very common, my company never batted an eye, and hired many of them. These were senior engineers, in their 30s-50s. This was during the tech boom though. Now with the vastly changed landscape, who knows how it plays out now.

 

[JoeAwesome]

What also annoys me is the whole 'stepping down' thing. Here have your £1.8M payoff for fucking up british gas, now please 'step down' and go fuck up somewhere else. If I fuck up, I don't get asked to step down.

Clearly, you haven't fucked up big enough.

 

[fake]

Dead giveaway of having previously failed upwards. Nowhere left to go but down, and they're not going there, so they skidoodle before they get found out and make a lateral change to another company.

 

[LoneSage]

Some years ago, I said the best way to get a higher salary is to job hop, which is still true. I said this to Faust, and some time after that he thanked me, either in a post or PM, that he took my advice and got a higher paying job. Pretty wild to think how I affected this man's life outside the forums. Mao bless

edit: @F4U57 feel free to confirm if what I said was correct or if I have false memories, thanks mate

 

[100proof]

Yeah, it's either for people who are a combination of skilled and motivated (so they continually move up quickly and deservedly so) or it's shitty middle managers moving laterally because no one can stand them for more than a couple of years.

I could've/maybe should've hopped in my field 5 years ago but I'm happy with my current level of responsibility and number of reports and while the management bonus structures very quickly get in to six-figures annually, those jobs are way less stable and require a lot of overtime. Fuck that noise.

 

[LoneSage]

Good thread, want the conversation to continue. Go on about imposters more.

 

[StevenK]

I job hopped a lot. I'm extremely bored by a job extremely quickly, as soon as I've got the hang of it I'm thinking of something else. The longest I've stayed in jobs is when it's given me lots of time to carry on side projects. I'll turn up and collect a wage while I plan something else, no problem.

I thought once I started working for myself I'd get over this restlessness, but nah, didn't happen.

I'm not complaining, I've loved having a nosey at lots of different things and it's served me well, but there's no doubt starting from scratch every few years is an uphill climb.

The reason I'm saying this is I agree with almost everything people are saying in this thread, but I wanted to throw "people with a child-like attention span" into the reasons for job hoppers.

 

[madmanjock]

I am in a tough spot at the moment looking for a job, partly due to job hopping being a thing / habit of folks, and subsequently being perceived as a potential job hopper. This is not entirely to blame of course, by any means, but it hits home anyway.

Background: I left my job of 12 years for better pay and work/life balance about 3 years ago. The new gig treated me well for the first year or so. It became clear about 18 months in that they would never invest in the security/compliance they were insisting we attest to, but I kept that job and found a new one before leaving, which was right before I hit the 2 year mark. This was about a year ago. I found what looked to be a really promising job; it was more interesting technically, with a better (or so it would appear) company, and really solid benefits. Unfortunately they treated me like shit the entire time. In my IT career I've never had a bad performance review, let alone been fired from a tech job, but they decided to let me go 11 months in for "performance" right before bonus season, and just months after breaking their much bragged about "no layoff" policy. Never mind that my supervisor and the head of customer engineering doesn't even like engineering, and interrupted me in our very 1st meting to explain that she "...only got a degree in engineering because teachers told me I was good at math and science. My husband is the one who actually likes this stuff." At one point she made me re-do an entire setup of our team labs that already worked, because "[the labs] working isn't the point, I want you personally to do every single task." Yeah, it went swimmingly with her

/vent

So right now, my last 2 jobs are a combined ~3 years, with the one before that being 12 years straight. And even being in IT security, I have not had a single interview in the last few weeks. I'm keeping my head up, but damn.

On principle I am much more about the right job than overall pay, when I went from the job prior to the 12 year stretch, I actually took a 30 or 40 percent pay cut in the beginning. I more than made it up over the years though.

I resonate with a lot of what you've said, I also work in a similar area (Information Security Risk). I did a graduate scheme at one of the big four accountancy firms in their management consulting arm. That was a big step up in pay and responsibility from the fairly shitty jobs I'd done for most of my 20s. I really bought into the corporate culture, loved the whole client / partner wine and dining experiences, up early do a meeting make a powerpoint presentation then smash through the caffeine in the afternoon and cocktails at 8 pm. It was a wild ride, but I was being taken advantage of I just couldn't see it since the employment terms and sense of 'team' was better than anything I'd had up to that point. I got a the nickname on this forum as Bateman during that period of my life - it was pretty spot on.

For those not familiar with how these partner firms work, each partner is an equity holder in the firm and their performance decides their remunerations for the year. Everyone else is an employee earning a regular salary, and perhaps a bonus at Manager grade or above. You start as a consultant, then make Senior Consultant after a couple of years if you are good, Manager maybe 3 years after that, Senior Manager 2 to 3 years after that, and then some become directors while others leap frog straight to partner. Once you get to Senior Manager or above most are really hungry to get that partner job, and the way 'in' to partnership is by bringing in new business to the firm and/or completely crushing it at all the client work you are currently involved with. The partners in a way don't want new blood in because it potentially dilutes their reward pool, so you have to be really fucking good to be considered a partner candidate let alone become one.

Anyway, if I say so myself... I became a bit of a victim of my own success where I was considered a reliable pair of hands which meant certain senior managers wouldn't let me go and work on other more interesting projects outside the multi-year boring ones which still required a degree of intelligence. I left at Senior Consultant grade about 12 months off becoming a manager.

First job away from the Big Four was with a bank that had a troubled past with their information security resilience shall we say. But the first year there was awesome. Then they restructured and moved one team that I was in to another team (tech risk in with operational risk). That was shite, I'm going to sound like a cock but basically our work in tech was vastly superior in quality to what the other team produced, but we got forced to 'dumb down' our work so it would look more like what the other team produced. Add to that egotistical but terrible 'heads of' and it just wasn't a nice place to be anymore. So I left that job with less than 2 years in post. I did make a healthy jump in salary by moving though.

I have been with my current employer who is also in Financial Services in a Cyber Risk role for about 2 years. It's a really family focused, friendly place to work and I've never had to do any overtime here except when it has been my own fault. Thing is, I'm getting itchy feet as it just feels a bit too 'easy' but at the same time I don't want my fingers burnt like they have been in the past. Also, going back to @skate323k137 's post - during my recent annual performance review I was given some bullshit reasoning about 'meeting expectations' but not getting the top performer bonus as they said I 'have lots of potential and should be doing more'. Umm, give me a pay rise and new job title then as I was already exceeding everything expected of my current role.

I found out from a sound senior manager that actually as my salary is already higher than a number of my peers (including those with more important sounding job titles than me) that they voted not to give me the top performer category of bonus more or less out of jealously. Lame.

So, once my bonus is paid in a few months I'll be looking to move on again.

 

[LoneSage]

I got a the nickname on this forum as Bateman during that period of my life - it was pretty spot on.

Information unfounded.

 

[madmanjock]

You were probably too drunk to notice you silly goose. Chat logs are long since purged from 2018 ish.

 

[Heinz]

I was mr 2 years until about 2012, now I'm a year in to a new job. I don't like to hop unless there is a real reason to, otherwise I stay until I learn everything and get bored.

 

[LoneSage]

You were probably too drunk to notice you silly goose. Chat logs are long since purged from 2018 ish.

Hey Siri, was Bateman a nickname for madmanjock?

INFORMATION UNFOUNDED.

Thanks Siri.

 

[madmanjock]

So, you got any stories to contribute to the thread except telling someone that you get paid more for changing companies (which everyone knows anyway) or… no?

 

[LoneSage]

Settle down, Bateman

 

[madmanjock]

Not even a little career story about how you got a job teaching English in China and then switched to become an informant for the Chinese government?

 

[Claudia Schiffer]

So, you got any stories to contribute to the thread except telling someone that you get paid more for changing companies (which everyone knows anyway) or… no?

he only has one company, fuck face. the ccp is the greatest company the world has ever witnessed - or my name isn't Claudia.

 

[madmanjock]

That's great news Claudia. Someone should tell Taipei.