That’s very true. Companies reap what they sow. Beyond an ironclad contract why should you be foolishly loyal?
[QUOTE=Dr. Strangelove]
It certainly depends on the field. In my corner of the software industry, someone who has been at the job for <2 years is effectively a junior engineer–regardless of how much experience they started with. It’s just not possible to learn enough about the system in much less time than that to be a truly effective engineer.
I would be skeptical of someone jumping around every year because I’d be concerned they’d never “pay off” the investment put into them (if you add up all the effort needed to being a new engineer up to speed, they’re probably a net negative for at least the first year).
But we’re largely focused on systems software, and value solid C/C++ skills and deep systems knowledge over knowing the latest web language.
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You could be me. Just swap out Top Secret/RACF for C/C++ as mainframe security analysts are a pretty rare breed. Two years is a conservative minimum time to really understand the nuts and bolts of the systems and to mesh that with understanding security best practices and policies.
I’m right in the middle, tenure-wise at the company after being here for 15 years. People either churn in and out within a year, or they stick around for 40 years.
Why should they be interested? What’s your offer, exactly, 'work your ass off for pathetic pay in the hopes that if you don’t get laid off you eventually will get paid decently, if you’re lucky and don’t ever end up on the wrong side of layoffs or a power struggle or a managers’s angry side? (Odds are you made significantly more money adjusted for inflation and student loan burden back when you were working long hours, even if you weren’t actually getting overtime pay.)
“Breaking your ass in a business” just sounds like a bad deal all around.
Being petrified of being fired is stupid. Odds are it’s going to happen to you multiple times in a career, so anyone smart should just treat it as part of the process. Busting your ass for 60 hours a week to avoid the first round of layoffs is a pretty bad deal, especially if the 40 hour ‘lazy’ guy can find another job before the layoffs even hit. I would definitely advise anyone starting work now to expect to get the axe multiple times if they’re going into most kinds off work.
That’s quite a bit more than my job–our company has only existed for ~20 years! Still, we have a fair number at 15+ years and 5 would be a bare minimum to be considered senior unless they came with very similar experience. At any rate, software is a big industry and you can’t extrapolate from one sub-field. I probably sounded more dismissive than I meant when I said “latest web language”; there are good reasons why parts of the software industry move quickly, and good reasons why other parts don’t.
I’m in software and the sweet spot seems to be 3.5 years at a job. Though in my specialty apparently nobody cares if you jump ship every 6 months. On the flip side, I’ll probably be unemployable by 50.
Thanks. The problems with startups and entrepreneurial groups is they are hard to find. Most of my network is in the oil field and no one is hiring any one right now.
Where people tend to want things to get done is at the senior levels once you get above cog status and that’s tough to get without the underlying experience. I’ve actually got an interview with Alcoa this week they actually said I don’t have any of the experience they are looking for for this role but they like that I can understand engineering and business and that I’m obviously a doer.
It’s interesting that you don’t even consider that it’s something about the environment/employers/workplaces.
Agreed. “Breaking your ass” makes sense if you are a first year analyst at Goldman Sachs on a path for six figure bonuses in a few years. It even made sense at one consulting firm I worked for where we were getting big raises and promotions every year and got paid for extra hours worked.
But honestly, the old “pay your dues” model where the big firms dangle that carrot in front of you where if you bust your ass for 15 years, they might make you partner is bullshit for all but a few.
And that’s really the problem. This “all or nothing” “up or out” mentality. Because once people realize they aren’t one of the “chosen few”, they decide pretty quickly that the extra effort isn’t worth it.
Because there is no EMPLOYER loyalty to employees anymore. If you bust your butt, they’ll still lay you off whenever it suits them. They aren’t going to reward you with regular raises, promotions, and a pension the way they used to. Some places regularly “reorganize” in order to lay off everyone who has been there a while in order to get a new crop of employees willing to work at entry-level pay.
In my industry breaking one’s ass is a given. It’s the nature of the business. It’ll be interesting to see how the model shifts in the next few years, given that the model is falling out of favor.
Again, depends on the industry. If you put in the time, persevere, and prove your worth, you will be rewarded. I’ve always believed that and I still do. If the rug gets pulled out from under me, I’ll stand corrected. But part of me will still believe it.
I must be the odd duck. I’ve never thought this way in any job I’ve had. Not being one of the “chosen few” gave me incentive to work harder.
Companies aren’t really expecting employees to be loyal. It is by design. The financial incentives to stay with a company have dwindled. Most people use to get stock options that couldn’t be exercised until after being with the company for X number of years, which was a retention incentive. They took that away. So it use to be, you go to work for a company, they gave you stock options so you stayed with the company at least until you could exercise them. However, the company would grant you additional options each year, which also weren’t exercisable until years away too. This was a way to keep the employees. With that gone, you have to ask yourself why stay with the company especially if the only way to get a good raise is to leave the company. 401(k) matching is OK, and I mean, just OK, but stock options really mattered.
You can also see the way companies now invest in training and such for employees, they have cut this down because they don’t want to pay for a Master’s degree for an employee who is going to leave the company for a better position once they graduate. It use to be it was an automatic benefit, and now it requires upper management to sign-off on paying for the degree if they even support this at all.
I work in software. It greatly depends on if you have done two things: Kept up with the latest buzzwords and have specialized in some niche part of an industry coupled with the software experience.
There are still a couple of locally-based companies in my industry which do this. One of these companies had a walkout a couple of years ago in response to the company being in merger talks with a competitor owned by a conglomerate. The reason? Employees were petrified that, if the merger went through, they’d lose everything. The merger talks were suspended as a result.
Promotion in these companies are within and they have many, many MANY longtime employees. So, yeah, if anything upsets the apple cart, there will be hell to pay.
My former employer was one of these companies, btw. It was bought out. Yes, I was laid off, but I lucked into my current position at a much higher salary because of my skill set, which I’ve said is becoming rare. My current employer is currently in merger talks with a competitor. If it goes through, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to either myself or my fellow longtime employees.
I know a company that used to have that kind of sweet setup. No, sweeter. Benefits such as “vacation resorts for employees, retirees and their families” or “home maintenance done by employer”. Some of the workers from those golden years, along with their siblings, and their children and grandchildren, have rarely paid for a hotel and never called a plumber.
Nowadays the majority of the people working for that company do not officially work for it, but either for some subsidiary which does not have the benefits, or are theoretically self-employed. Call your own plumber.
I think you have to understand the nature of the corporate world. For rank and file workers, there is often little value in staying at any place for more than a few years. Industries and technologies change over time and chances are, whatever you are doing now will be irrelevant or at least very different in 5 years. Even if your company is slow to change, maybe that buys you an extra 5 years, after which you are now looking for work with skills that are even more obsolete. That’s the reason there are so many contractors and freelancers these days. Yes, cost plays a part. But a bigger reason is that it gives companies a greater flexibility to work on specific projects and then release those resources.
It’s a different story once you get to management level. If you want to continue to advance in your career, you need longevity. The longer you stay at a company, the more you understand about it’s products, strategy and processes. The more connections you have at that company. Managers and executives also work on plans that span years.
So I would say job hopping has a value if done strategically. Companies will forgive one or two jumps after a year. But more than that, they will certainly wonder why you either can’t keep a job or can’t find a place that’s a good fit. They might hire you, but chances are you will be relegated to a transitory role or project that no one else wants to do and may find yourself looking for a new job in a year again.
If you are going to job hop, there should be some purpose to it. Just changing industries or companies every year looks flakey.
This has been enlightening for me. I had assumed that within certain industries and capabilities, that job hopping would be more necessary for fulfillment and advancement. So confirmation of that was great.
I’m sure that is the case, but you still have to question the person that over a 15 year period that jumped 7 times, if it was because of environment, etc. then he/she is horrible at determining what’s a good environment for them. Interviewing is a two way street.
Most of the candidates I am interviewing are at the management level. I’ve even interviewed CEO’s for a subsidiary level, that had CEO experience for 10 years, but had jumped every 2 years. With the prevalence of private equity ownership of companies for 4-7 years, this phenomena is becoming more frequent.
Your definitions seem to be forgetting the group that’s most likely to stay put: the true rank and file workers who will rarely if ever get any kind of promotion and who often aren’t even interested in one. You know, those people who think that jeans and a T-shirt is “posh”?
But it appears you are saying that a high percentage of people are coming through with these job hopping resumes. I always find that when that starts to happen, maybe I’ll the one who is out of synch. Maybe the world is changing so that it simply makes sense with more careers to behave that way. It seems you really really want this to be a resume flaw, but if it becomes more and more prevalent, maybe it points to a structural shift.
(My industry has lots of churning, so it doesn’t strike me as anything weird.)
Right, I’m not saying there are literally no jobs where it makes sense to bust your ass, but the vast majority of jobs, especially entry-level jobs are not on track for six figure bonuses and you aren’t even getting paid for working lots of extra hours. In case it’s not clear to anyone, I certainly believe that there are good jobs out there and jobs where it makes sense to knock yourself out, just that there are vastly more that aren’t.
What do you base this on - is the company contractually obligated to do it in some way, or is it just wishful thinking? That conditional is so filled with weasel clauses it’s completely meaningless - if someone isn’t getting rewarded and leaves, they obviously didn’t persevere and put in the time. If someone gets laid off or fired, regardless of the actual reason you can just say they didn’t prove their worth. It sounds something a person in an abusive romantic relationship would say about that relationship.
7 jobs in fifteen years will depend a lot on what those jobs are.
7 jobs at 2.3 years each? Hmm.
3 jobs at a year each, 2 at two years, one three year and the last was 4 years? Zero problem with that.
One ten year job followed by six jobs of less than a year? Bad sign.
six jobs of less than a year followed by one ten year job? Probably also a bad sign because they’re out of date.