[101011]

I know this question is situated around the tech, but the real answer is to leave every couple of years. There is always more money to be made, and the more experience you have the easier it is to get it.

I'm not saying this is what somebody should do, but if you're only indexing for income, then it's the only answer IMO.

[Apreche]

Strongly seconding this answer. I did the opposite in my career. I did not change jobs often enough. One job I had for a very long time. The growth staying in place was not very much. I knew changing jobs would get me more money, but I didn't think I could find a job as good in all the other aspects. I was wrong. I've changed jobs a few times more, and every aspect got better, including money.

[mmmm2]

I agree with this as well. I spent 7 years at my first job, and would have been much better off moving at least once. After that I tended to average closer to 3 - 4 years at jobs.

I would recommend having at least one stop where you spend more than a year or two, just to show that you can get past the initial ramp up period. This avoids having a red flag on your resume, but that may be old fashioned thinking.

The original stipulation is someone with the skills to get into a FAANG, so I'll focus less on that. I'm also going to ignore quality of life considerations.

Cynical ideas, with a slant towards making the most money: - Don't be afraid to move, or take advantage of working remotely.

- Get a job that pays Silicon Valley money / RSUs but then move somewhere cheap.

- Pay more attention to potential stock benefits, that's where the bigger money can be.

- When the market is running better again, jump to a company that should go public soon. This way you get the most shares with the least personal risk. If you get good a guessing who the "hot" company will be, you can do really well.

- Companies aren't allowed to say when they're going public, or their stock may disappoint. Switch and try again if you've guessed wrong.

- Don't stick around past your initial stock grant (generally 4 years).

- Keep an ear out for the hot new tech / VC focus, and learn enough of those skills to get hired.

- Get good at interviewing.

Note: this is what's worked in the past, future conditions may be different.

[itake]

I spent my 20s following this advice, but now in my 30s I am starting to question it.

When I look up the org chart, the people higher up have been at the company 5+ years. Moving into the higher roles requires the right opportunity, which often takes time to find. Those "right opportunities" are rarely given to people new to the company and are often used to retain existing high performers.

Certainly if you're stuck in your career and are not on a growth path, jump ship. But if your job is promoting you consistently every 2–3 years, then I'd stay.

[sarimkhalid]

You are talking about two different goals. Yes, stay if you want to climb the corporate ladder but if you want to maximize income then one must jump ship. Some people are just not cut out for the corporate route so moving is good advice. These are the people that just transition to starting their own companies in their 30s/40s or consulting.

[mmmm2]

Interesting in that I kind of did the opposite. I stayed at one company for a long time, and then moved more around later in my career.

Perhaps there is an argument for getting to the "staff" level quickly, and then hop around more as it's harder to advance past that level?

[itake]

In my own network and in my current role, I see people that should have left years ago, but they never got the hint that their careers stalled. I would have a direct conversation with my manager to see where the growth is and then verify that with action (Are they promoting other people instead of me? If yes, leave.).

As far as reaching staff and then jumping ship, I have no idea. I started my career 10 years ago and at the time, I thought "senior" was the highest option, but then staff role got created.

I wonder if in 10+ years, the IC ladder will get taller, so people don't feel "trapped" at staff level.

[wonderingyogi]

Title inflation is a thing even with ladders. I know of some non-tech industries where there are 15 levels to climb and at level 7 you were considered a director already.

[sanitycheck]

Can't upvote this enough (or indeed more than once) but yes, this is the way to do it. Don't stay anywhere more than 2 years until you're more than comfortable with your income and/or taking a role where it's beneficial to stick around for longer.

Companies don't expect people at the beginning of their careers to stick around for long.

The other benefit is that you get to experience a broader range of environments and technologies, which is good for everyone.

[dave333]

I would say this is right for the first 2-4 jobs but then I would start looking for really promising startups with equity and stay until vested (normally 4 years) unless it's clear the startup is not doing well or you see another startup you just cannot miss. Having said that in my actual career I missed out on a big equity payday due to the dot com bust and my best year I earned about 200% of my base salary + benefits due to bonuses. Later in my career 35-60 I did better maxing out 401K, and stock option plans and just accumulating IRA money. I wish I had converted my traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs during the dot com bust when I was self employed running my own business and making very little.

[rvz]

That is the only correct answer.

[bcrl]

To a point. People who move around too much will not get the job if there's a comparable candidate that has stayed around longer at previous jobs.

[jethro_tell]

Not necessarily, not when I hire. On-boarding, and ramping up in a new environment is a skill and to some extent, I see that as a value add. A person who has gotten comfortable in a role for 10 years is often slower to ramp vs. a person that has seen a lot of environments and projects.

[bcrl]

Depends on the role. When it's a highly complex system where it will take 6 months for the person to become a productive contributing member of a team, I have most definitely heard and been part of conversations where we considered if the person will stay around long enough to be worth the effort of training. On the other hand, for roles where it's a series of 1-2 month projects to make fairly straightforward changes to network protocol implementations, time to turnover for a new employee hasn't been a concern.

Of course a reasonable explanation for why a person has turned over jobs so many times can negate the concern. It really depends on the candidate. My point is that someone early in their career needs to recognize that there are both upsides and downsides to switching jobs frequently.

[SanderNL]

Optimizing for “ramping” seems incredibly shortsighted.

Does seeing things through, pushing through the hard bits, the bits that only come up after a few years when your pet project starts spouting fire or some major restructuring happens and not to mention loyalty doesn’t mean anything anymore?

[jethro_tell]

If the company was giving pensions and compensating people like loyalty mattered then we could have that conversation but there is no loyalty toward employees from companies. I see loyalty to any company as shortsighted from the employee's point of view.

[SanderNL]

There’s the issue of building virtue and good character, which I suspect are ancient and long obsoleted concepts.

This pragmatism is understandable, but I don’t think it’s a nice way to live. Of course to each its own.

[jethro_tell]

You can build virtue and good character and still manage your career in a way that puts yourself and your family first. I'm not buying that the only way to build character is to work for below market rate so someone else can make money and then forget you when it's not convenient any longer.

Asymmetric loyalty is a dead end. Deriving your virtue and character from your job is also a fools errand and a myth that is perpetuated by anti-labor capitalists to line their pockets before they absolve themselves of equal social responsibility.

Build character and exercise virtue by making your community and family richer.

[SamuelAdams]

I’ve been on interviewing panels before. It is extremely rare to have two “comparable” candidates for any one position. Everyone has different pros and cons. Tenure at past positions was always very low on the list of qualifiers we evaluated.

[wonderingyogi]

Is there a reason why it was low on the list? What qualifiers did you placed more on? Could you explain more about the thought process?

[californical]

I’ve also done a decent amount of interviewing, and have a similar (but slightly different) experience to the GP.

We considered someone’s career history a problem when they had several jobs of ~a year or less. Or someone interviewing for a senior position with 4-5 years of experience across 5 companies, for example. If those were the case, we were much more likely to reject them.

If someone (hypothetical) had 10 years experience, with a few that lasted 1-2 years, one that was only a few months, and maybe one that was 4-5ish years, then that was no problem at all. We wanted to be sure they had seen the consequences of their prior decisions, if they were coming into a high-mid or senior role.

When we did hiring, we wouldn’t be comparing candidates 1-to-1 like “Well A had this, but B was good at this, which one should we pick?” …instead, we would just say “ok we’re in hiring mode, keep hiring everyone who is good until we have enough for xyz goal”. So it wouldn’t be that CandidateA is better than CandidateB, but rather if they both met the standards, then they’d get hired.

Some of the qualifiers that mattered more than tenure for us were:

* are they capable of explaining technical problems and communicating

* do they understand algorithms at enough of a level that they won’t cause major performance issues

* are they polite and friendly, how do they respond to feedback

* can they build an architecture which handles expanding requirements

* how eager are they to learn and work on our tech stack + business domain

I haven’t interviewed juniors really, so I can’t speak much to that. But when we’ve hired someone less experienced, it would be the same requirements as above just with a lot more leeway on tech, and more emphasis on “eagerness to learn” + “receptive to feedback”

[jaredandrews]

If that is the case, then the job is not one that our hypothetical job hopper wants, so it all works out.