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Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

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Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#81

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

kamaal wrote: post #47
Pfhreak wrote: post #20

> Millennials are labeled lazy, self-entitled, and, therefore, responsible for high turnover rates in the labor market. Who are they supposed to be loyal to? Certainly not their employer, who is squeezing every cent of labor value from their work. I'd understand this attitude if companies took care of their people or if the person was part of a worker's coop. Also, anecdotally, job hopping has been incredibly lucrati…

>>Who are they supposed to be loyal to? To themselves. The best advice I ever received was from my dad. And it was 6 months into my first job. I wanted to hop and there came the advice 'investments matter more than income, and you need stability to borrow money for the big ticket ones' . I hopped anyway because like your case I was looking at doubling my income. But the next two ones I've gone slow and with stability…

What investments can you recommend? I'd like to invest but my savings aren't too big and I'm scared to loose them on stocks vs buying a house.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#82

Post by imtringued »

BossingAround wrote: post #55

What I truly wonder is, does hopping between positions within one employer count as job hopping? If I stay with company X for 5 years, but every year, I have switched a position ( e.g. tech support engineer -> QE -> software engineer -> Evangelist -> manager), would that disadvantage me on the job market? Or would I get bonus points for wanting to stick with the company X?

That's not job hopping, that's a promotion.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#83

Post by _4ziu »

eesmith wrote: post #76
WilliamEdward wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer almost always makes more money than the employee and is the one profiting from the worker. It is not an equal comparison and the worker will always make less than the money they bring in to the company.

I've never liked that Marxian interpretation of the employer-employee relationship. Why can't we both profit? If I buy a product from you, you make money from it. And while I lose money (because I gave it to you) I probably increase something else - happiness, if it's for my hobby, or the ability to make more profit, if it's for my job. With that analogy in mind, consider a test pilot, who wants to push the edge of e…

This isn't marxian and nowhere did i mention his name or philosophy. I don't agree with him much either.

This is a basic understanding of how the world works. It is clearly impossible for an employee to be making more than they bring money into the business. Otherwise the business wouldn't exist.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#84

Post by eesmith »

_4ziu wrote: post #83
eesmith wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never liked that Marxian interpretation of the employer-employee relationship. Why can't we both profit? If I buy a product from you, you make money from it. And while I lose money (because I gave it to you) I probably increase something else - happiness, if it's for my hobby, or the ability to make more profit, if it's for my job. With that analogy in mind, consider a test pilot, who wants to push the edge of e…

This isn't marxian and nowhere did i mention his name or philosophy. I don't agree with him much either. This is a basic understanding of how the world works. It is clearly impossible for an employee to be making more than they bring money into the business. Otherwise the business wouldn't exist.

Your description sounds very much like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour :

> Marx's exploitation theory is one of the major elements analyzed in Marxian economics and some social theorists consider it to be a cornerstone in Marxist thought. ...

> Exploiters appropriate another's surplus labour, which is the amount of labour exceeding what is necessary for the reproduction of a worker's labour power and basic living conditions. ...

> Once capitalists are able to pay the worker less than the value produced by their labour, surplus labour forms and this results in the capitalists' profits. This is what Marx meant by "surplus value", which he saw as "an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the laborer by the capitalist".[9] This profit is used to pay for overhead and personal consumption by the capitalist, but was most importantly used to accelerate growth and thus promote a greater system of exploitation.

When I read your original comment I was reminded of the presentations of the Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff, eg, from https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/understanding-marxism-u... :

> The heart of Wolff’s argument centers on what Marx called “surplus labor,” which is what employers appropriate above what they pay for wages. After further deducting raw materials, machinery and the like used in the production process, what’s left is the employer’s profit.

> Wolff maintains that the fact that productive workers are not compensated for the full amount and worth of their labor constitutes “exploitation.”

I think it's understandable why I saw them as being similar.

Is the main difference between you and Marxian thought that you don't consider the difference to be "exploitation"?

You wrote: "It is clearly impossible for an employee to be making more than they bring money into the business. Otherwise the business wouldn't exist."

The Wikipedia page gives some criticisms to that Marixan view, which also hold for your statement: "They suggest that Marx should have allowed for two things; namely, permit a fair profit on the risk of capital investment and allow for the efforts of management be paid their due. "

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#85

Post by Pfhreak »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #36
WilliamEdward wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer almost always makes more money than the employee and is the one profiting from the worker. It is not an equal comparison and the worker will always make less than the money they bring in to the company.

Then we should all start our own business, right?

Alternatively, we could start more worker coops.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#86

Post by PaulStatezny »

moneywoes wrote: post #35
AmericanChopper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, people who want to develop their skills tend not to struggle much with employment. The people who I’ve personally seen get the most frustrated are the kind of people who don’t understand why their colleagues are upset about the 15,000 unfixable linting errors in their React spaghetti, and who proudly announce in standup that they fixed the failing pipeline by commenting the tests out. I’m sure we’ve…

As a recent grad looking to get a job and avoid those errors, do you have any resources or suggestions? Maybe like the book clean code?

I'm not the user to whom you directed the question, but I would answer your question this way:

Software developers fall along a spectrum between "caring intensely about quality" and "only caring that their ticket/assignment gets done, with very little regard to quality".

These are the kind of people he or she is talking about.

This can manifest in a lot of ways. Lack of effort in creating names, adding to the "messiness" of the codebase in various ways, not coordinating or communicating with team members to do things in a consistent way. In general, being content with "quick and easy" fixes that take less work but cost everyone in the long run.

People will notice where you sit on this spectrum.

I don't know what domain you'll be working in, what company, even what _kind_ of company. But if you soak in the need to have a high bar of quality, you will be able to find the resources that pertain to your language/tools/domain/etc in order to make high quality software. It just takes time.

I could rattle off topics to study from the top of my head, e.g.:

- SOLID principles of OOP

- Learn the benefit of immutable data

- Normal forms of relational databases

But the best thing is to get lots of experience. With different projects, different languages, different programming paradigms, OOP vs FP. Good books/articles/tutorials help the most when you're applying them to a real work context. If you constantly seek out wisdom about how to do things better as you do real work, you won't be the type of person your OP was referring to. :-)

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#87

Post by drdrey »

kamaal wrote: post #47
Pfhreak wrote: post #20

> Millennials are labeled lazy, self-entitled, and, therefore, responsible for high turnover rates in the labor market. Who are they supposed to be loyal to? Certainly not their employer, who is squeezing every cent of labor value from their work. I'd understand this attitude if companies took care of their people or if the person was part of a worker's coop. Also, anecdotally, job hopping has been incredibly lucrati…

>>Who are they supposed to be loyal to? To themselves. The best advice I ever received was from my dad. And it was 6 months into my first job. I wanted to hop and there came the advice 'investments matter more than income, and you need stability to borrow money for the big ticket ones' . I hopped anyway because like your case I was looking at doubling my income. But the next two ones I've gone slow and with stability…

You need to borrow for investments? I hope you mean for a house

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#88

Post by WalterBright »

praptak wrote: post #69
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ceiling is actually the minimum of what you contribute and the wage of the person they can replace you with. Only if you are unaware of the competition, which is highly unlikely if you have such skills. Lots of companies have server farms they'd love to shave 1% off of. It's like if you're a movie director that has a track record of making hit movies. Your compensation goes way, way up. Same if you're an athlet…

Get real, tech skills are not that unique. Maybe in a very new and very hot area of current research.

> tech skills are not that unique.

Some are unique enough to get that $1m compensation. I don't know what John Carmack's compensation is, but I bet it's north of $1m. And he'd be darn well worth it. Ditto for Linus Torvalds.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#89

Post by WalterBright »

roel_v wrote: post #77
WalterBright wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think a toll booth operator can say 'I do 10k in revenue a day, pay me half of that and we'll call it good'? Of course not, because it isn't his skills making that happen.

There are lots of software jobs where the 'skills' are equally interchangeable. Most programmers aren't in a position to negotiate a rate based on the scarcity of their skills; they have to negotiate based on the market rate, which is set by supply and demand under fungibility od the good (or service, in this case). That is not to say that those services are 100% fungible, but a lot closer to 100 than to 0.

> There are lots of software jobs where the 'skills' are equally interchangeable.

The added value of a software engineer is much higher than the value added by a clerk. That's why software engineers get paid much more. Supply and demand will force a company to pay more for a person that creates $100 in value than a person that creates $10 in value.

Re: Job Tenure and the Myth of Job Hopping

#90

Post by Viliam1234 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #45
asdff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally among my fellow millennials across different fields who've jobbed hopped, few did it for the promotion, most did it because they were being exploited and depressed. Companies are becoming increasingly aware that they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits because people are just that desperate to get a job that whittles down ye olde student loan and has a hea…

> they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits I would also add "free Red Bull, breakfast buffets, Friday Beer Time" and other "Freebies" DO NOT count to me as benefits. So many of the startups I've interviewed for try and lure you in with all these additional "benefits". No, ten cases of free Red Bull will not pay my rent. These companies routinely low ball really good d…

I already perceive "free coffee" as a red flag, but "free Red Bull" would make me run away screaming.

(Not sure if this needs explaining, but if company provides all kinds of free drinks, it could be generosity, but if the choice is suspiciously limited to stimulants... you will probably need them.)

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