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Please Jobhop as much as Possible

angryasian.posterous.com

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Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#41

Post by gaius »

philk wrote: post #34

It's important to remember that Calacanis and Suster are writing advice from a selfish standpoint. Of course they want the people they hire to keep working for their companies no matter how shit the conditions are. If I were them I'd be writing about how the best way to get ahead was to come and work for me for free. It doesn't mean it's actually useful advice for someone who wants to get ahead.

Yeah, Calcanis had this weird turn of phrase in his original blog entry "set his career back 5 years to get his salary ahead by 3 years". WTF does that even mean?

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#42

Post by rikthevik »

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #18
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #15

I recently had a conversation with my 16 year old son who was having girl problems. Part of my advice was about playing the field. i.e. "What are the chances the best woman for you, in all the world, lives 1/4 mile away?" Similarly, what are the chances the best job for you is your first, or second, or third? Slim. Playing the field with employers should be the standard mode of operation. This possibly benefits emplo…

"Surely the answer isn't the guy who was super productive for a year and then moved on." I've been that guy for my whole life, and not a single employee has tried to convince me to stay with better perks, none. A couple of times I stayed and got not even enough to compensate for inflation, so fuck em, I moved on. If you want better perks, every year you have to move on. ps. But you have to be good, and I mean real go…

Agreed. I've found it way easier to negotiate a raise for a new position than to try to get one from my current job.

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#43

Post by sjf »

jrockway wrote: post #19
ctd wrote: post #16

Jobhop yes, but please be careful--you might just hop yourself right out of the market. My resume resembles Swiss cheese. I have a whole bunch of short-term jobs, and holes where I've taken off a year or more to pursue my own ideas (I'm "freelancing" during that time). Fortunately I was able to get another job after the last break, but I didn't seem to be getting as many callbacks as I'm used to. This, coupled with m…

I doubt it. We are desperate for anyone who can answer our interview questions correctly. We would not care at all where you have worked, how much time you have taken for yourself, etc. Just know something about programming.

I'm sure it is possible find to some development job with a patchy resume. But it sounds like you are hiring for a junior position, is that really appropriate for someone with N years experience?

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#44

Post by Alex63 »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #23

When older people complain about supposedly whiny, entitled, self-centered and disloyal young people, exactly one work comes to mind: Projection. We came of age while society fell apart. We're in our 20s and won't be able to own a house or have children until our mid-30s, due to the still-absurd housing costs, absent job security, and lack of a decent health care system. The Boomers were born into an affluent, forwar…

I think your perspective is biased towards considering post-WWII society as the norm. My perception is that the end of WWII marked a sudden change in most of the things you have called out (housing cost relative to income, job security, health care). It would be nice for all of us if the societal changes that occurred after WWII were permanent, but isn't it more realistic to think that WWII was a catastrophic event that pushed most systems out of equilibrium, and that we are now returning to a more "normal" state? I may not be expressing this correctly in economic terms, but my opinion is that the value of human labour has been declining since the industrial revolution, even though the quality of life (in most regards) has been improving. The information age only seems to be accelerating this process.

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#45

Post by Alex63 »

gaius wrote: post #40
jdminhbg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like a dispatch from Bizarro World. My parents' Carter-era mortgage was for 15%+, mine signed last year (well before my mid-30s!) was for 5.5%. The rest of my counterexperience is just anecdote, so I'll spare everyone the details and just ask: Do you have even a single shred of evidence backing up your nostalgia for things you didn't actually experience?

It's more relevant that the Boomers had 10 workers per retiree whereas we have 3 workers per retiree. The Boomers took the next two generations prosperity and used it all up themselves.

Sorry, I may be missing your point, but how do you blame the Boomers (of which I'm at the tail end) for this situation? Shouldn't you be blaming the "Greatest Generation" (parents of the Boomers) for setting up a system that depended on maintaining a high ratio of workers to retirees?

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#46

Post by edw519 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #9

I feel somewhat passionately about this, and I've always thought this job-hopping debate was extremely skewed. There are people who want loyalty and dedication above all else -- both from themselves and from their workers and employers. Then there are people who want challenge, risk, excitement, and travel. From what I've seen, if you want to learn meta-tech (and not just tech in your neck of the woods) you need to g…

if I were the type of person to consider a full-time job, I would not be the type of person who had all those things you want

Very insightful comment! I never thought of it that way.

Like Daniel, I have spent a lot of time both on my own and in enterprises. I've met lots of smart people in enterprise IT departments. They have tended to be very deep in one or two areas and very shallow (or absent) in most others.

I have always found it easy to accomplish a lot very quickly in an enterprise environment, not because I was smarter than anyone else, but because I had been around the block on my own so much more. But until today, I never realized why. Thank you, Daniel.

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#47

Post by gaius »

Alex63 wrote: post #45
gaius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more relevant that the Boomers had 10 workers per retiree whereas we have 3 workers per retiree. The Boomers took the next two generations prosperity and used it all up themselves.

Sorry, I may be missing your point, but how do you blame the Boomers (of which I'm at the tail end) for this situation? Shouldn't you be blaming the "Greatest Generation" (parents of the Boomers) for setting up a system that depended on maintaining a high ratio of workers to retirees?

The Boomers are the ones that ate the seedcorn.

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#48

Post by AmberShah »

This post is great and perfectly refutes their points. They want unconditional loyalty to a low-paying, high-stress job that might sell out or go bust any minute. And for startups in the VC game, they give drip-drops of equity that will never amount to anything even if they did get a big buy-out and then might be asked to move to another city or just laid off. All for the "opportunity" to work there? I don't think so. Maybe I'll just go work for a company where I can work 40 hours a week with an extra 50K a year and build a startup of my own on the side.

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#49

Post by S_A_P »

Great Article. After college I did what I thought I was supposed to do and work for 2 large corporations for the first 7 years of my employed life. I found the pay below average for the market- especially if you are some one who increases your skillset at a higher level than your peers.

I noticed most of the employees were there to float along with the tide and do enough to stay employed, while very few had aspirations of making changes and doing good things. After that I started "job hopping"- Starting with a contract gig, after 3 months of that went to a medium sized company, and have now ended up at a small company of 100 or so employees. With each subsequent jump I have increased my pay by 15-30%, and learned skills I would NEVER have picked up had I stayed at the "big company".

As mentioned in the article, jumping around from job to job made me realize what I wanted to get out of my employer. Most importantly, I have 20-30 new contacts that I feel I could tap into should I ever become unemployed. Most of the time its what you know and who you know...

Re: Please Jobhop as much as Possible

#50

Post by roc »

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #18
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #15

I recently had a conversation with my 16 year old son who was having girl problems. Part of my advice was about playing the field. i.e. "What are the chances the best woman for you, in all the world, lives 1/4 mile away?" Similarly, what are the chances the best job for you is your first, or second, or third? Slim. Playing the field with employers should be the standard mode of operation. This possibly benefits emplo…

"Surely the answer isn't the guy who was super productive for a year and then moved on." I've been that guy for my whole life, and not a single employee has tried to convince me to stay with better perks, none. A couple of times I stayed and got not even enough to compensate for inflation, so fuck em, I moved on. If you want better perks, every year you have to move on. ps. But you have to be good, and I mean real go…

> "I've been that guy for my whole life, and not a single [employer] has tried to convince me to stay with better perks, none."

Immaterial. You never take the counter-offer.

An employer who refuses to reward you until you're at the point of looking elsewhere is not worth remaining at. Further, you'll wind up on the short-list of problem employees and in the event that they do need to reduce headcount you will be disproportionately likely to lose your job earlier, thus disadvantaging your next job search.

There's no upside to taking a counter-offer beyond immediate convenience.

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