I've only been out of college for a few years, but my engineering friends who stay at a company for at least 4 years seem more the exception than norm. Was it like this in the pre-Linkedin-recruiter-spam and pre-Glassdoor-interview-question days?
Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#2I sure did, as did most of the devs I worked with. For two reasons: first, that the only time you'd get a pay raise is by changing jobs and second, because lots of employers considered more than 5 years or so at any given job to be a yellow flag (because it's a potential indication that your skills aren't staying up to date.)
Even now, I rarely stay at a given job for more than 5 years or so. But that's mostly because I get bored and want to do something new -- and because my skills get stale and I want to use new ones.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#3I think it depends on how you define "job hopping". I think that very short tenures (something less than 2 years or so) were rarer then than now, but I don't think that anything over, say, 3 years is what I would even call job hopping.
I think 3 years is plenty of time to hone your skills, grow in an organization, and get exposure to multiple different projects or teams. After that, I don't think anyone would begrudge you for leaving for a better opportunity, now or in the 90s.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#4.com boom was full of 3-6 month contract roles, where each new contract was an opportunity to improve cash compensation.
Improving earnings via job-hopping is nothing new, the difference may be in the other reasons people hop.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#5I sure did, as did most of the devs I worked with. For two reasons: first, that the only time you'd get a pay raise is by changing jobs and second, because lots of employers considered more than 5 years or so at any given job to be a yellow flag (because it's a potential indication that your skills aren't staying up to date.) Even now, I rarely stay at a given job for more than 5 years or so. But that's mostly becaus…
The problem with this these days is that, even if you want to do something new, companies will not hire you because you lack work experience of what skills you want to obtain.
I heard that back in the days, if you knew coding you were hired. Today you have to know 10000 things.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#6I sure did, as did most of the devs I worked with. For two reasons: first, that the only time you'd get a pay raise is by changing jobs and second, because lots of employers considered more than 5 years or so at any given job to be a yellow flag (because it's a potential indication that your skills aren't staying up to date.) Even now, I rarely stay at a given job for more than 5 years or so. But that's mostly becaus…
And they just let you use the new skills and not assign work based on your existing experience (the "old skills")?
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#7> Was it like this in the pre-Linkedin-recruiter-spam and pre-Glassdoor-interview-question days?
I will say this, we had way less information back then. People still job-hopped, but there was no levels.fyi tempting you with grand fortunes. For me at least, it was friends or friends of friends and word of mouth. "Hey, there's this new company VMWare, it's only 20 or so people, but they are doing this cool stuff, you should look into it."
Typically if you were outside of the bay area, job hopping wasn't as frequent because most cities didn't have a LOT of companies to chose from. I was in San Diego at the turn of 2000 and there was military contractors, semiconductors, and telecom. If you made to the top and worked for Qualcomm, you usually stayed there. At the time, in that particular region, no one paid a whole lot more and everyone got their own office at QC. They started stock-splitting every quarter and no one was going anywhere, no matter how much they were over worked.
I would say the temptation for me personally to job hop now is less than before because there is just so much more information about companies, and at the end of the day, most companies who pay well suck pretty bad, and amazing companies don't pay all that well. :)
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#8I sure did, as did most of the devs I worked with. For two reasons: first, that the only time you'd get a pay raise is by changing jobs and second, because lots of employers considered more than 5 years or so at any given job to be a yellow flag (because it's a potential indication that your skills aren't staying up to date.) Even now, I rarely stay at a given job for more than 5 years or so. But that's mostly becaus…
The problem with this these days is that, even if you want to do something new, companies will not hire you because you lack work experience of what skills you want to obtain. I heard that back in the days, if you knew coding you were hired. Today you have to know 10000 things.
Leetcode wasn't a thing for my first 15 years. I got a couple of jobs just from a lunch or dinner and a couple of polite conversations.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#9I did. The interviewing situation was much more reasonable back then, so it wasn’t difficult. You could do lots of interviews without taking up a huge amount of time and I never did any live coding or whiteboard coding bullshit. Companies also fired people more quickly when someone wasn’t working out. It was a healthier job market in a lot of ways.
Re: Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?
#10I job hopped all the time in the 90s. It's not a new thing. Whether it was common for most people I can't say, but the idea of jobs for life was already gone.