The longest I've been at a place has been 2.5 years. I find that I'm usually itching to get out around after the 2 year mark due to various reasons like boredom from doing mostly the same thing over and over, lack of change in environment, no new challenges, people I know having mostly left/transferred to better places.
[+] [-] techsupporter|7 years ago|reply
I have enjoyed it, for the most part. If you like the thrill or engagement or whatever other descriptor you want to use of smaller companies or startups, then it is definitely not that. What it has been is rock-solid stable, interesting, and good benefits and pay.
I've debated looking for another job several times, usually on crappy days, but I still come back to I've been at this company for a long time, I know how it works, I have many of the benefits of tenure (more vacation time is one, that managers and other groups give me more of the benefit of the doubt is another), and maybe a little bit of me being "boring." I don't want to change for the sake of change and I'm happy to go to work, do something I mostly like, get paid well for it, and then go home and live my life separate from work.
Hope that gives you some insight into why someone would stay at the same employer for so long.
[+] [-] indemnity|7 years ago|reply
Made it through GFC, acquisition, etc.
In same company, have had engineering, product & managerial roles.
Right now transitioning back to engineering (my choice).
Why not move?
Well, company is keeping up with industry despite its size (Fortune 100), I have decent autonomy over what I work on and how I work, I’m compensated well above local market, and have seen 5-8% pay increases every year, along with generous RSU grants.
This effect of this has meant in less than 5 years now I will be mortgage free (in a housing market with 12x annual income multiple for house prices), and a financial buffer of a few years annual income
I could have been working for cooler or more exciting local startups, but wouldn’t have been even close to the financial position I am now in (I’m 38).
Work is enabling my independence and peace of mind.
[+] [-] robertAngst|7 years ago|reply
I am curious what your pay is.
I feel like people get screwed if they dont change employers.
[+] [-] joewee|7 years ago|reply
I have worked with a lot of people who are primarily lifers at their company. My role has often been that of a change agent (outsider / consultant hired specifically because I’m an outsider).
One thing I have seen consistently is that the real power and influence sits with those with tenure. The older a organization the more critical tenured employees are to its operations.
Young people often think that they can gain influence or freedom to do what they enjoy by changing jobs and getting a better title, only to run into the “old guard” who refuse to accept change.
But there is another more reliable method. And this works in large organizations best, becoming a trusted influencer...trust comes from doing your work to the best of your ability and keeping a positive attitude.
Good leaders are often taught to find the influencers when joining a new organization. So the longer you stay, the more influence you gain. And influence gives you the ability to determine what you want to do. There tends to be a lot of turnover at the top and bottom of an organization. Making those in the middle very important.
This is so critical to established companies that they have all sorts of programs designed to retain people identified as important once they have gotten past the initial audition period. IBM and Intel are famous for their leadership development on both technical and management fronts.
If you want to enjoy the perks of being around a company for awhile, you need to go to bigger organizations or companies with mature management that are setup to facilitate this.
Some people want to work on new things / startups every other year. Nothing wrong with that. But when you have a company full of people like that, the culture isn’t going to be conducive to doing the things required to keep people around for the long term.
[+] [-] purplezooey|7 years ago|reply
These companies are more famous for slowly and subtly purging their technical and management staff like after they are too old. Like over 40.
[+] [-] bronco21016|7 years ago|reply
I wish I could give perspective on working in the same job for decades but I’m only 7 years in. 34 to go and zero intention on changing employers or careers unless I have to.
[+] [-] brianwawok|7 years ago|reply
You spend more time at work then anything else, perhaps tied with sleeping. More than with your spouse. More than with your kids. More than relaxing. Why not make work mean something? If work means something, you can't just do it for 40 years as a punch in, punch out. That sounds horrible.
[+] [-] voycey|7 years ago|reply
1) I feel like I can effect more change with fewer barriers in a smaller company - the idea to goal conversion is much more condensed vs when I worked at IBM and the number of processes and approvals it had to go through.
2) If you are in small companies there is usually very little room for progression, smaller companies = smaller budgets - when I was an employee of these the only real way to get any kind of pay increase as experience increases was to switch companies.
3) Some of us enjoy the change, I loved the work I did at IBM but it was still mostly BAU work, there was very little scope for personal innovation over the long term. Sure you could switch departments quite easily and that was a huge benefit but back to point 1 - the innovation momentum is hard to keep up. At the companies I have been working at for the past 7 years, every day is different, every day is researching the next best thing or how to improve the current things we have with a view to squeezing out more performance, or decreasing costs. Sure I have some BAU work but it's mostly meetings and developer mentoring, hardly painful!
4) To your final point, I am lucky to be doing something I have always been passionate about - this isnt a rat race for me, its not about keeping up with others, my definition of success is how much I enjoy going to work in the morning and not having to fret the little things.
[+] [-] deathanatos|7 years ago|reply
You're not being rewarded for your success or your hard work in any meaningful way; you're not learning new things or barely keeping up with the status quo; you're forced to work with other individuals who do not care about the quality of their work, or the effect it will have on others, or do not offer enlightening conversation, views.
> collecting the check
The check is not keeping up with the ever increasing cost of living.
> People are so caught up in the rat race […] Career does not have to be the definition of success.
I don't want it to be. I want to be able to make enough to meet my (reasonable) life goals.
If your company is giving you meaningful work, compensating you well for it, and you would not find better on the market, then more power to you. Not all of us are so lucky.
[+] [-] jlarocco|7 years ago|reply
Besides that, a person can do their job, collect a check and go home regardless of which company they work for, so why stick with a one that isn't satisfying? Why not see what the other options are and get a fuller perspective? The software world is huge, and you'll never experience it all working at the same company forever.
[+] [-] TACIXAT|7 years ago|reply
If I was sentenced to 40 years of randomly assigned work then I'd just clock in and clock out, but I get to do something I love at an exorbitant salary. With a taste of that I'm going fight for positions where I can do more of what I love and make more money. I don't really care about keeping up with people or prestige, I care about freedom.
I'd be making less than half of what I do now if I had stayed at my first job. This buys my freedom sooner.
[+] [-] soneca|7 years ago|reply
There's nothing inherently wrong with either option.
You might not understand, but I think it would be worth to exercise empathy and try to understand it, instead of passing judgement. The OP is doing precisely this, not passing judgement and asking for help to exercise empathy.
[+] [-] chillacy|7 years ago|reply
Depends on what the job is, how much that check is for compared to CoL, and how much I have going on at home.
I imagine if someone hated their job and didn't make enough money, they'd want change. I've been in both camps at different stages of my career.
[+] [-] packetpirate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muzani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] purplezooey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
The other benefit is getting to know business and management. Usually they turn over less frequently, they love someone who actually is committed to the business and they can rely on.
The culture of a place that looks after people and has longer term employees is great. Less turnover means less interviewing, fewer clueless newbies that need training and fixing up after. My favorite project had 30 devs and 25 of us had been there for more than 5 years - no one need hand holding or did stupid things, we were super productive and everyone enjoyed a great time.
For some people it can be easier to get promoted by moving, I'd suggest the opposite - just start doing the job you want to do, usually no one will complain.
Finally you said people you work with moved on to "better places" is that grass is greener or you are always working for your second choice employers?
Oh - one last thing. If you have a family its great to have a steady work schedule and you can concentrate on looking after babies and not worry about extra job hunting stress. Find a place you like and enjoy the stability.
[+] [-] silveroriole|7 years ago|reply
Good: you know the company politics. You know who to ask for anything, who not to trust, who you can joke with and who you can’t. You can talk back to higher-ups, tell them what you want to do rather than being told what to do, bend the rules a little or set your own rules. You can pull from prior experience - “I know you don’t think that estimate is right, but we did something very similar five years ago and it overran because of this same risk factor.”
Bad: you know the company politics. You’re embroiled in every stupid “this guy doesn’t like that guy!!” management issue. Unless you have remarkable self-control, it’s all impossible to stay out of. Also, people either come to you for every tiny matter because you know everything, or they see you as unapproachable and won’t talk to you when they really need to, forcing you to chase them. Either way, in total, RIP coding time.
[+] [-] moodyjm51|7 years ago|reply
The secret is to always be trying to learn enough to move the next new project. My goal everyday is to try to learn something new each and every day.
[+] [-] WWLink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otoburb|7 years ago|reply
The reasons I stayed are simple: I've learned a tonne, changed roles and responsibilities, interacted with many interesting characters, and continue to grow personally. No matter the tenure, if you aren't being challenged then your boredom will affect your performance.
Create new challenges that solve problems within your organization, and if that doesn't work by all means strike out for greener pastures.
Best of luck.
[+] [-] yeutterg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atentaten|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanmoriarty|7 years ago|reply
I try to work on greenfield projects where I have to research a new topic from scratch, which sometimes is exciting, but in the end it’s not the same, so I’ll likely not wait until the 6 year mark and I’ll jump ship sometimes this year.
[+] [-] airstrike|7 years ago|reply
I just wouldn't recommend you do the same job for more than ~24 months.
[+] [-] chomp|7 years ago|reply
Companies with tech departments (that will cater to this crowd) that are around that long tend to be maybe big, somewhat stable, somewhat largish revenue companies.
It is not the norm for people to stay that long at a company (tech company especially) these days. Lots of coworkers come in and eventually leave (by their own choice, sometimes not). You end up staying in touch with the ones that you like. You end up cherishing the people you work with, because some of them might have been there as long as you. You end up going to their children's birthdays, and celebrate holidays with them. They can be life friends once you share that amount of time with them.
Leadership drifts in and out. Passing the baton that often ends up diluting the company culture to a point where the business itself becomes its own organism, carried by its own inertia and making very clinical decisions about its own survival. Some of these decisions begin to weigh down on you. I guess it's true what they say, familiarity breeds contempt.
Some good things - you have a lot of time to design, implement, and deliver on projects. You can wind up with quite an eclectic portfolio of internal initiatives that you've delivered. Many of these can be quite fun. Benefits are good over that period of time. Many companies end up delivering benefits on a graded scale based on seniority. I'm up to 6 weeks of paternity leave if I ever want to use it.
Assuming you joined near the top of a payband, years of merit/cost of living increases can give you golden handcuffs. You get a lot of time to build wealth, but without careful planning you will not financially be able to leave. You become even more beholden, and less willing to leave over time. Victim of your own comfort? Actually, maybe not comfort. Inertia?
There's some thoughts. The people around you, and the company change over time.
[+] [-] sokoloff|7 years ago|reply
Over that time, I've held countless different roles, starting as IC, moving into leadership roles; we've expanded product lines, expanded geographies for both production and development, evolved tech several times as well. I've worked in development, tech operations, manufacturing, and some cross-cutting roles. (I joined before AWS or public cloud computing was a thing; my group is now almost [98+%] entirely cloud-based.)
If we are able to continue to thrive as a business, I expect this might be the last place I work. I could retire now and we'd be OK, but with two kids in elementary school, I'm realistically way better off working another 10-ish years as I get plenty of PTO and a 4-week additional paid break every 5 years.
Same company, many different jobs (which seems to be a pattern of sorts in the other responses). Pay is OK; I could make slightly more at a FAANG (or at least at the FxAxG subset that have local offices), but I take pride in what we've built from essentially the ground up, love the LT I work on and a portion of the company's success is traceable reasonably clearly to what my group does and how well we do it. If we fail to thrive, it will be at least partly my fault.
Somewhat ironically, I didn't even want to join this company back in 2003; I was just at the worst job I'd ever held, essentially being bribed to keep a chair warm and do nothing for 6 months until some outsized bonuses got paid out. The day those bonuses hit, there was a line of people waiting to resign to the director of software. I think I was #6 that day and he was exhausted from hearing the same story. This company wasn't sexy, their tech was fairly weak, they didn't have the best reputation, but when I got into the interview process, I was blown away by the calibre of people working there and the vision of the CTO/CEO. I went from "I'll take anything because it beats getting paid well to do nothing" to "Hey, this is interesting!" and it's only gotten better since.
[+] [-] cosmez|7 years ago|reply
Why did i stay? i was the only dev for like 8 years, being responsible for your work and not being able to blame someone for legacy code is an eye opener.
it makes you love your craft even more, i joined to start a port, turns out this porting process never ends (I like improving my own code).
[+] [-] zedgerman|7 years ago|reply
In short, in a huge company there are challenges at all levels of the technology stack and that’s completely forgetting about areas like finance, marketing, business development, legal and HR.
It’s hard to get bored if you try to keep learning and challenging yourself every day.
[+] [-] viraptor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mproud|7 years ago|reply
Some things might suck, but if you have great managers, great benefits, and like the work you do, you might stick with it. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
[+] [-] oldtimeythrower|7 years ago|reply
It only worked because of growth: both of the company and of my personal development at every stage in the growth. It's been like changing companies 4-5 times, but with no risk of getting into a situation I regretted. And a lot of my peers jumped at 10% raises or minor status improvements, and fell behind.
If you can hit the right company in the right market at the right time in its growth, prove yourself valuable and acquire equity, you will find many professional challenges that will far outweigh job-hopping for short term bumps. Take risks on this if you are under 30.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of growth and health of the company though. FAANGs get all the joy from eager 22-year-olds and antsy 25-year-olds, but at some point each of those companies were 200 or 500 or 1000 person companies--when it made a lot more sense to join.
My advice: pick a small, promising company in a field that holds risk but will still be relevant 30 or more years from now, and build your career there.
[+] [-] svsucculents|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gustomaximus|7 years ago|reply
Also just for enjoyability, I prefer variety of tasks.
[+] [-] kgwxd|7 years ago|reply
The part that sucks is that very few people recognize it and the ones that do are rarely the ones that get to make the calls. The ones that do make the calls think any developer can do what I do. What I've seen happen several times, is the company decides to replace me with outsourced/cheaper development, and after an attempt to reason with them, I stay for a bit to help them move in that direction and then move on to another place. Invariably, they call a year or 2 later looking for help, not because I've planted some obscure code no one can understand but me, but because no other developers have the knowledge to form the necessary follow-up questions to the ever-changing specs handed down from the higher-ups before moving forward. They end up with systems full of incorrect assumptions that fail daily and tie up all the developer time being fixed. Now I can't help them because I'm working for a competitor. It's infuriating. Every company I've ever worked for I've wanted to make the best in the industry, but they've consistently been blinded by short-term goals, driven by unfounded hype to be "progressive", when all they needed to do was a few basic things better than the competition to take the majority of the market. Even when I get far enough to produce numbers to prove that point, they still want to do some wild shit no one is asking for, or they get bought out (because they start growing rapidly) by a venture capitalist company that just wants to do a quick flip.
[+] [-] cced|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|7 years ago|reply
I average 5% compensation growth (higher if you factor benefits), and aren’t compelled to move to a saturated, expensive market. Same employer doesn’t mean same role. I usually stick around in a particular thing for 2-4 years until recently, but now my scope is very broad.
End of the day you need to decide if you want to do the same role forever or if you want to evolve. If you want to be a senior programmer forever, staying in the same gig is my vision of hell.
The risk is that if you are forced to change employers by circumstance, you’re less attractive to employers, especially when you hit senior roles that aren’t executive.
[+] [-] aprdm|7 years ago|reply
The company is one of the global leaders in its segment, treat their employees very well, pays very well (probably less than FAANG or your SF startup ;) ) and gives me a lot of autonomy and opportunities to practice leadership.
I don't see why I would want to change companies. I've worked in seven companies before this one (startups, big companies) and usually left around the 2y mark. This one hits all the check boxes (work environment, work/life balance, technical challenges, perks, good pay). I can certainly see why people stay here for a long long time.