Ask HN: How much job hopping is acceptable?

[romanhn]

Hiring managers - what constitutes too much job hopping for you to pass on a resume?

Everyone else - do you have a lower or an upper limit on how long you tend to stay with companies?

As the former, my personal rule of thumb is to look for at least one recent tenure of 2+ years for someone with 5+ years of experience. More allowance is made for candidates with less experience, but again - 4 one-year tenures is a red flag.

I do see a trend for shorter tenures in the last couple of years, presumably due to the competitive market, so am curious where you stand as either a hiring manager or a potential job seeker.

[jbob2000]

I think for software development, it takes about a year to get fully up to speed on a company's development practices and processes. So after a year, most people will ask themselves, "is this the company I want to stay with for a while?" and leave or stay for a few more years.

Under 1 year, I have to think that something out of the ordinary happened and I would be inclined to ask about what happened. Did the company go under? Were there some crazy red flags that forced you to leave? And internally, I'd ask myself, is this person really picky? Do they have some red flag that keeps getting them let go? Etc.

I don't have an upper limit, but definitely a lower limit; 2 years. 1 year to get up to speed, 1 year to give the company a chance. I recognize that all companies have problems and I want to see progress being made on solving those problems. If, after 2 years, we're still talking about the same issues we faced when I started, then I'm going to start looking.

Curious why someone would place an upper limit on time served? If the work is good and the company is good, why leave?

[tedmiston]

> I think for software development, it takes about a year to get fully up to speed on a company's development practices and processes.

I'm not sure what size company this perspective comes from, but in early to mid stage startups, I don't think anyone would give you a year, more like 2–4 weeks. More than a month or two without might suggest poor culture fit.

[delphinius81]

> Curious why someone would place an upper limit on time served?

If the person has the same title at a company after 4+ years (unless they are already in a lead/senior role), it's a bad sign. If this is in the first 10 years of someone's career, it tells me they might only be doing enough to get by. Whether it's because they a) are not ambitious enough, b) aren't talented enough, or c) the company they work for is terrible at recognition/promotion is something that I would have to find out during an interview (if everything else on paper looked ok).

[burrox]

What if the reason why that person left had nothing to do with the work environment?

Right now I'm a bit worried about leaving my current job (10 months in) because I have the opportunity to go backpacking through South America with a friend, which I honestly believe is not something that comes up very often.

Anyways I was just wondering how a manager might react to my situation once I come back and start looking for a job again. Could it impact my professional profile in a negative way?

[jackmaney]

> If the work is good and the company is good, why leave?

Possible reasons, off the top of my head:

1. Being approached by a recruiter or hiring manager and end up being given an offer you can't refuse (eg much more money, dream job, etc).

2. Your spouse or significant other has to move to another city for their job, you don't want to leave them, and your current employer won't let you work remotely.

2a. Ditto with needing to move to care for an older and/or ill family member.

3. A shift of passion into a new career.

4. Health problems that cause such an extended leave of absence that you may as well leave.

5. I've encountered some managers who are leery of people who have spent "too long" at one place, wondering, eg "Why did s/he stay there for ten years? Did this person just find a spot to coast and collect a paycheck? Why hasn't s/he moved on to bigger and better things?" I think this line of thinking is just as knee-jerk as being leery of "job hoppers".

[mkaziz]

It's also really easy to get silo'd in. My company is fairly niche and I love working here, but a decent chunk of what I'm learning isn't transferable.

[fullshark]

> Curious why someone would place an upper limit on time served? If the work is good and the company is good, why leave?

I guess in terms of professional development the person might think it's important to expose themselves to new companies and challenges. They don't want to just get comfortable somewhere and let their skills slowly deteriorate. I agree that it's not a 100% fool proof plan but I get it as a rule of thumb.

[smileysteve]

> Did the company go under? Were there some crazy red flags that forced you to leave? And internally, I'd ask myself, is this person really picky? Do they have some red flag that keeps getting them let go?

I describe each company on my resume, and on the "not a decision" to leave ones describe the reason.

Examples:

* "Division / [City] Office Closed

* "An early stage startup..."

And in person, I typically make it clear that the company was unable to make salaries or was still looking for product market fit.

[jghn]

While I disagree with the sentiment, I've heard people who argue that folks who stay in one job for a long time are more likely to have not kept up with best practices, aren't enough of a go-getter, and stuff like that.

[hacknat]

It really depends, IMO, if a person has a company they were with for many years, then a hop, then another at-least-two-year stint, than I probably won't care about that hop at all.

[antoniuschan99]

I have been contracting for the last two years and have been doing ~3-6 month contracts so my answer might be a little different.

Whatever the stack I get up to speed usually after 1 week and provide value to the company pretty much immediately (it's always scary starting a new project because I feel like I need to prove myself within the first few days since I'm working with a new team).

If it's a normal job, I think 1.5 years should be a good amount since that is apparently the median for how long developers stay at a company nowadays.

I think the mentality that a hiring manager won't hire someone because he's afraid someone will leave after 6 months is old school. People are going to leave, but you need to figure out how to get the most value out of your developers while they are there. Also, if it takes you that long to get someone up to speed it's either that developer is too slow or there's someone wrong with your process.

Ultimately I see the pros of job hopping (early on in your career at least) because you will have worked with so many different people. Your gauge in people's personalities and experience will be a useful asset. Plus you will get to know a lot of people in the industry.

[fweespeech]

> I have been contracting for the last two years and have been doing ~3-6 month contracts so my answer might be a little different.

Tbh, I lump all these together under "Self Employed" on my resume.

I personally think anything 1099 / short-term contracts should be considered 1 employer (you).

I wouldn't call contract work "job hopping" since the employer is really yourself and you are simply working on a series of 3-6 month projects.

[throwaway1979]

I don't see a big deal with 1 year tenures. Under 1 (3-4 months seems suspicious). I imagine people leave after 1 year if they took a job that wasn't a nice place but they had some incentives requiring them to stay a year (sign on bonuses are typically vested at 1 year; moving assistance also needs to be paid back if an employee leaves within a year).

So ... if a person leaves at the 1 year mark, it was likely they who chose to leave. Given the stories about bad employers in tech and the fact that there are many good employers too these days, I would say good for the moving employee!

[toomuchtodo]

It's really odd. My current startup didn't question my job history of only staying at companies for under 2-3 years (~15 years experience total), but when I interviewed at Deluxe Corp to manage one of their hosting acquisitions, I was questioned quite a bit about it. Their internal recruiter even asked me to justify the short duration at each org.

"How do we know you'll stay with us for more than 2-3 years?"

"You don't without a contract."

(I did not accept the offer)

YMMV.

[ShakataGaNai]

Ask first. Please, please, please. If you are a hiring manager ask the candidate about their job history before you dismiss them entirely on their job history.

I had two slighty-more-than-a-year stints in a row and I know some people who it caused concern for. What was the reason? One was a contract with a non-profit that didn't have the budget to continue and the second was a failing startup that was downsizing. Both perfectly logical and understandable. Fortunately my next boss-to-be asked first.

I've also seen people who love small startups, they get in on the ground floor and stay for 18months before they move on. They did an amazing job and I wouldn't hesitate to hire them on even if I knew it was only for 18 months. (oh, then they found an amazing startup and stayed for ~4 years)

At the end of the day there are way too many variables. As a hiring manager myself I've seen and heard it all. So don't make assumptions. Don't guess. Interview them as normal and ask the pertinent questions about their history.

[romanhn]

I have seen a couple of candidates include short reasons for why they have a couple of short stints ("mass layoffs after acquisition", "group disbanded") - this really served well to allay any concerns I may have had.

[apocalyptic0n3]

When I am looking at resumes, I generally hope to see at least some stability. If someone has had 10 jobs in 4 years (which I would say is about 1/4 of all resumes I read), it makes me think there is something wrong with the employee, not the employer.

Another red flag I look for is when someone has freelancing on their resume and they will basically have this:

Freelancing, Inc. 2005-Present

Company A July 2014-September 2015

Company B December 2012-August 2013

Company C January 2011 - March 2012

You get the pattern. While those people generally end up spending more than a year with the company, they always quit and go back to "freelancing". I've spoken with some people about it in the past and it seems semi-common for freelancers to work full time for a company, save up as much as possible, then leave and skate through their savings and the odd freelancing job for a year or two, and repeating. That's generally not what we are looking for

So for someone with more than a few years of experience, I generally like to see at least one job in the last 5 years where they lasted 2 years.

[jackson23]

I see your points. As a [freelance] Consultant, my resume has over 40 over-lapping, yet relatively short duration (2-6 months) positions listed. As a Farm/Server Architect and Admin for very specific technologies like SharePoint Server, MS Project Server, O365 SharePoint Online/Project Online, I typically Architect the server farm(s), install and configure the servers (automated as much as possible) and turn over the keys. Every day a recruiter calls or a client questions me about the short durations, I simply say "How long did you keep your Architect around after your house was built?" Very few companies need a relatively expensive Architect full-time...which suits me because I've had exposure to so many problem sets, environments, company cultures, great people [mostly].

At many companies I meet some IT folks that have worked at their company for 15+ years. They are typically the ones that need the most help as they have mostly only had exposure to their problem sets and methodologies. New tech, in some cases, scares the heck out of them. The younger ones seem more eager for the change(s)...but c'est la vie.

[pklausler]

If the answer to "why'd you leave that job so soon after starting?" was "The next company called me up and offered me a deal that was so much better that I'd be stupid to not take it," then that's totally fine and is in fact a good sign.

[noxxten]

Mostly. Employers could also become afraid you'll walk away from them too.

[fma]

I'd prefer if someone joins my team that they show they will stay on my team. I don't want to spend my time getting them up to speed and have them leave in 6 months. I'd rather have an above average developer for a few years than a rockstar for 6 months...because you'll be wasting my time and everyone else's on my team.

If I have context why you're job hopping then I'll take it into consideration. There are legitimate reasons to leave in a few months. However, if you've never been at a place or project for more than a year, I can safely assume you never had to support an application much in production because by the time you were knowledgeable enough to do so, you left.

[mikestew]

I'd prefer if someone joins my team that they show they will stay on my team.

I'd prefer that, too. Then I get in there and found you vastly under-represented the amount of technical debt you have, I find out that the reason there's no CI isn't because you didn't have anyone to set up a server and tie it to SCM, it's because your devs are lazy and management is too soft to push it. The build is up to 1200 warnings now, so the odds of there are ever being a clean build are zero. The team I now manage has people that were grandfathered in from an extremely low bar and now I can't get rid of them no matter how much they drag the rest of the team down.

I wish there were only one place like that on my resume, but I'm a slow learner. Hopefully I've learned enough by now to break out of the control statement before getting to shittyCompaniesOnResumeCount++.

[snockerton]

Looking at tenure in isolation of any other context is meaningless. I've interviewed candidates with multiple 6-12 month positions on their resume that turned out to be great contributors, and other folks with 5-10 year positions that were horrible.

[soulnothing]

I've been very curious about this as well. For financial reasons I have needed to do contract over the past 2 years. Primarily doing 6 months stints, some were outlined as a year but that fell through. The problem I've had is that mid way through my contract the project is canceled.

This has become a really big issue as when I look my "stability" is bought to light consistently. My first two roles were 2.5 years, and 1.5 years respectively. Both times I left on good terms. So I can commit, and will if given the oppurtunity too, and room to grow. My contracts have just been largely proof of concepts, that were shelved.

The thing is I'm tired of jumping, worrying how long my contract is going to last. That I need to keep going looking for the next thing, because either the contract will run out or I stagnate. This is also leading to a counter point and negative when I look. I've not been able to ship any projects to production. I feel at this point I'm stuck in a contracting loop, and I'm not sure how to get out.

[dbrower]

A reasonable career trajectory is something like doubling the time at each place until you hit the 8-10 year mark, modulo uncontrollable events, like a place shutting down.

When you have someone who's been repeatedly changing employers every 12-18 months for a while with no mitigating factors, you begin to wonder about ability to commit.

It may matter less if your are in a field where things are done in sprints, the person is likely to be instantly productive, and there isn't a lot of complexity to absorb.

There are people who have the temperament to be short to mid-term contractors, and who don't like to be and wouldn't be good long-term hires.

[ecesena]

It depends if the candidate is applying or you're sourcing her. I generally don't skip based on the very last job, because even if it's 3mo there may be a reason that is worth investigating in an info interview.

But in general, I skip if the pattern seems to be hopping every year in the last 2-3 years.

Another thing that I look at is where geographically the candidate was working. If I see no hopping for a while, then moved to Silicon Valley and started hopping every year, then I pass, or at least I yellow flag that in the pipeline.

I don't have any issue with several years in just a company, actually I think it's rare and very positive.

[davio]

I'm a hiring manager and I don't really care about short tenures. I think recent grads are doing themselves a disservice if they aren't moving every year or so for the first 5 years.

[xutopia]

My average is roughly 1 year at every position with the maximum being nearly 2 years.

I prefer working in startups and smaller businesses rather than a bank or government entity. In the startup world I found 1-2 year stints don't seem like a bad thing. In the conservative banking world it could be.

[nilkn]

I don't mind multiple short tenures in general, but that doesn't mean that they can't be a negative. If you've never stuck at a job longer than a year, then that means you've never had to support your own code and infrastructure at all except perhaps immediately after it was hot off the press. That's pretty critical experience, and if you don't have that experience, I will notice that and take it into consideration when it comes to how much seniority and pay you expect.

Speaking of seniority, it's very hard to hire someone into a senior or leadership position if they've never stuck around at a job long enough to actually develop any seniority. It's impossible to develop management skills if you're quitting your job every 12 months. Even at every 24 months you're really limiting your ability to get some truly solid management experience under your belt.

All that said, having long tenures on your resume obviously doesn't guarantee anything. A week or two ago I interviewed someone with 15 years at the same company and the title of Chief Architect who seriously struggled with a simplified version of FizzBuzz.

The bottom line is that I try to keep an open mind about everyone, and if I have concerns over the lengths of previous jobs I'll always give the candidate the opportunity to explain their viewpoint. Usually I can be convinced and won over.

[logfromblammo]

It depends on who initiated the breakup, and why. If a person got fired or laid off, that person might not have had any control over it. If the employee resigned, I'd be wary of any duration shorter than 18 months.

It might be that long before seeing your first "annual" pay increase. It is very common for me to see the crap raise that I got for the year and send out resumes to check on competitive offers, to see if I could do better.

It is also long enough to see a company on its worst behavior, and decide that enough is enough. I personally go two years with a merely bad--but not awful--company, to see if I can jump-start any improvements. After that, I send out resumes, and jump ship as soon as it is feasible.

But I'd also see that as an indicator of the quality of companies these days. I have only worked at two companies (out of 8 jobs) where I would have been happy to stay there indefinitely. They both got bought out, and the new owners laid me off without regard to my individual value.

I have always been "at will", so if you're going to question my durance at previous companies, I'm going to question your commitment to all your employees that have no contracts. That door swings both ways. If you're looking too closely at that, I might think you're trying to weed out candidates that are too sensitive to the corporate bullshit that may be driving your existing turnover rate, in which case, I might get spooked and either withdraw or demand a higher offer from the start.

[itsdrewmiller]

There are two types of red flags that can come out of frequent job changes:

1. Several <1 year tenures - this person gets fired a lot

2. Exclusively 1-2 year tenures - This person is trying to jump around to maximize salary (and isn't able to convince their current employer to match/exceed an offer)

For #1 job history is usually not the only indication that this will be a problem. Depending on how many open positions you have they might make a screen, with the vast majority washing out there. "It was contract work" is usually a flag, and being at startups that went under is a mitigating factor.

#2 is somewhat more risky as a hiring manager - more expensive to interview because they are less likely to flame out early in the process, but then much more likely to not be able to agree on an acceptable offer. Overall these folks are still going to be net positive contributors over their tenure, but there is opportunity cost in missing out on hiring someone who would kick ass over 5+ years at your company. It's hard to definitively pin someone down as this category outside of 4+ jobs never going more than 2 years. If they are coming through a recruiter that's a flag, and if they have moved cities that's somewhat of a mitigating factor.

Seeing someone who stayed at the same company for 4+ years and got one or more promotions there is a big plus on resumes.

There is not a lot of research into any of this stuff AFAIK, so this is basically all just my opinion. What I have seen basically says that people are pretty bad and inconsistent at evaluating resumes:

http://blog.alinelerner.com/resumes-suck-heres-the-data/

[edem]

> 1. Several <1 year tenures - this person gets fired a lot

I disagree. I have several half-year tenures and I was never fired from a job.

I also disagree with 2. If you start with $N and an other company offers you $2N after 1 year there is no chance that your current employee will give you a x2 raise. For example at bigger companies there is a policy for that.

[35bge57dtjku]

> "It was contract work" is usually a flag

Why is that? Aren't there tons of contract jobs, at least in certain areas?

> If they are coming through a recruiter that's a flag

Why is that?

[st3v3r]

"2. Exclusively 1-2 year tenures - This person is trying to jump around to maximize salary (and isn't able to convince their current employer to match/exceed an offer)"

Isn't the conventional wisdom that, even if you are able to convince your current employer to match, that you shouldn't take their offer? Most employers have already decided you're "not loyal", and as such will be looking to get rid of you.

[cauterized]

Hiring is exhausting and expensive and eats a ridiculous amount of my team's time, not to mention onboarding and learning curve. It's not worth my while to hire someone who I think has a <50% chance of staying at least two years.

That doesn't mean every bullet on your resume needs to be 2 years long, but if you're at least a handful of years into your career, you should have at least one.

And yeah, if you're working for startups and they keep going under, that sucks. But maybe it suggests that you could stand to learn a bit more about the business end of things and improve your ability to evaluate an employer's prospects.

[dsfyu404ed]

It's goanna depend a lot on exactly what industry niche you specialize in and what you specialize in below that. As long as the details have a semi-obvious non-negative explanation it shouldn't be a problem.

Employees are like expensive, specialized tooling. The more specialized and refined your skill set is then the more acceptable job hopping becomes. If you're the kind of person that's brought in as a subject matter expert to help do something your experience may not be relevant and you may be, expensive, under utilized and dissatisfied when there's no more work for you. To continue the tooling analogy, if a company buys specialized equipment for a contract job it's usually sold afterward. This is why highway plowing and bridge building equipment is all ancient and has had half a million owners. A contract is won, (used) equipment is bought, maintenance (or modification for the specific task is performed), the work is done, someone else wins the contract, the equipment is put up for sale and the cycle continues. It takes resources to keep specialized equipment or specialized employees around and functional (pay/maintenance) and it's not efficient to have it sit around mostly unused (making a senior dev chase bugs). However, if you're switching jobs in less time than a typical project takes you're gonna come under the same scrutiny as the crane that's up for sale while the rest of the fleet is building bridges, "what's wrong with this one?" If you're not sticking around for about as long as it takes to complete on project then it's gonna draw scrutiny.

If you're resume looks like you're job hopping and moving up it's likely going to be looked upon neutrally or favorably (i.e. "nobody can keep this guy because everyone else has more important/lucrative stuff for him to do").

Job hopping is definitely within the range of normal for the vast majority of the industries people on HN work in so unless your resume practically says you can't hold a job then it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not going to put a number on "job hopping" because it's dependent on industry, specialization, region, training time and probably a bunch of other things" What's short for someone developing control software for radar systems in Boston is likely an eternity for a JavaScript dev specializing in UI in SV.

[brador]

Stop waiting until you lose a job to find a new one.

Upgrade regularly, as soon as you find a new job that you like more go take it. Building your skills and Networking are key. Network all the time, get to know people who will be hiring, conferences, events, find people who are working on things you want to work on and people you want to work with.

Lifes too short to wait it out.

Upgrade fast and regularly, pay shoots up, location improves.