"one of the reasons folks who jump ship too often look suspect resume-wise. not always the case but those frequent short gigs look like the person is prone to bailing after the ramp-up honeymoon is over and it's time to get sh1t done."Reasons I've quit jobs after a year that had nothing to do with lazyness (in fact, I'm often one of the people who puts in the most hours in my teams, and praised for it so as long as I keep putting in the hours):
1 - There's no connection between my boss/team-mates apart from the work. We have nothing in common. We see the world differently. We like different things. Interactions not related to work are strained. We probably wouldn't choose to spend time with one another if work didn't force us to. This is actually kind of a big deal, since I wind up spending most of my waking time with my coworkers, who it'd be nice to actually like and enjoy spending time with. There's only superficial due dillegence you can do for this during the hiring process. Most people seem at least decent during the interviews. It may take time to find out they're really not your type of people, and you're not theirs.
2 - Getting blamed for something out of my control, and having no power to change it. You can't fix it because the boss says no, but you're the one who gets blamed when things go wrong.
3 - Being surrounded by a company full of money-chasers, whose sole reason for existence seems to be to make more money. This is related to reason 1 above, and kind of makes me depressed.
4 - Working crazy hours for long periods of time. There's a lot of talk about 4-hour-days on HN recently. Well, if you're a fan of 4-hour-days you can probably understand how debilitating 12-, 14-, and 16-hour days are, especially when you have to work them for months if not years on end.
5 - Being forced to do boring, menial work you're way overqualified for because the company is too cheap to hire someone less skilled to do it. This leads to extreme boredom and frustration.
6 - Having no growth opportunities and feeling stuck in your position.
7 - Having spineless bosses that constantly kiss up to upper management and force the team do whatever they're told no matter how ridiculous or wrong they know it to be.
8 - Being underpaid and feeling unappreciated -- especially when you choose not to work crazy hours, which seems to be the only way some people can be impressed.
9 - Being treated with contempt by people who don't understand what you do.
10 - Feeling like your life is slipping away working on crap you really don't care about.
11 - Learning new technology -- something that got me excited a decade ago -- just seems like more of the same, and a drudge, full of irrelevant minutia.
12 - Having lots of interests outside of work that I'd much rather be spending my time on.
13 - Having to deal with mountains of bureaucracy and political bullshit. Having to hear endless cheerleading from upper management that everyone knows is a load of crap, yet having to smile and applaud.
14 - Feeling seriously depressed and burnt out, in large part due to much of the above.
I wish I could say companies like the above are rare, but they're way too common.