Ask HN: In the 90s, did programmers job-hop frequently?

[kvathupo]

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?

[anonzzzies]

I co founded a 400 person company started in 1996 and sold in 2011; we had only 2 people leave (we fired a few but that’s not job hopping) before 2008. I have another company for the past 10 years and it’s nearly impossible to keep people, especially during/after covid, no matter the pay. I would say it definitely increased from my pov.

Edit: reasons for leaving are; 1) want a bigger company for security (which is not really a thing here as you get paid even if the company goes bankrupt or you are fired; also I have funds for 10+ years for every person we hire; it’s not possible for us to go bankrupt as I am risk averse these days) 2) wanting to do resume driven dev; in that case indeed I wish them luck but good riddance; those are the most worthless to me; wish I could detect that behaviour earlier, but for obvious reasons, they try to hide that

[bruce511]

Ultimately its really hard to generalise when it comes to job hoppers. It can be good, or bad, for both employer and employee.

As an employer we expect folk to hop[1] a bit in their 20s. If that extends into their 30s or beyond that's a red flag. It suggests either the candidate will leave us soon (if they are instigating the hops) or that they're a bad employee (if the keep getting fired.) Neither is a good look.

Equally hopping as you get older gets harder. A 55 year old who hasn't held a job for more than 5 years is not terribly appealing to me.

On the up side, the serial hopper who is 32, just got married, has a kid on the way, and brings a bunch of skills is probably worth a punt.

[1] I'd define a "hop" as a function of age. Anything less than 2 years is a red flag. For older folk a regular pattern of < 5 years is a flag.

[ipaddr]

A 55 year old job hopper is common. They are sometimes called consultants or they work short term employment contracts. They travel like a 20 year old.

Plus no matter how old you are working for startups means frequent employment changes. Don't be ageist.

[bruce511]

absolutely people "semi retire", they get a few consulting gigs here and there, and earn a bit from that. They're usually very good at what they do and get called in to accomplish a specific task, perhaps one that needs a very special skillset.

That's different to a 55 year old, looking for a permanent position, with a history of job hopping. And to be clear i's not the age that worries me, it's the hopping. I believe a 30-somthing who's looking to "settle down a bit more" - I don't believe a 55 yo with that story.

I follow the idea that when people show you who they are, believe them. As an _employer_ I'm just not excited by people who are around for a couple years, then move on. Assuming there's competition for the post, I'd likely lean towards the one with the better track record (all other things being equal.)

[ipaddr]

I understand your point of view. 30 years experience with no more than 2 years you can expect they probably would stay with you for about the same length. A 32 year old with the same track record after a big life change like marriage/baby might change but so might the 55 year old (they might want to settle down as well).

I've gotten feedback you stayed too long and you didn't stay long enough from different employers during the same job cycle. Every employer expects different things.

Curious what do you consider an acceptance length at 55? 3 years, 5 years, 10 years+ vs a 32 year old?

[bruce511]

It's not a number - each person's history is unique so its a lot more nuanced than that.

When hiring we're looking for someone who'll fit, someone who will add to the whole. Hiring people is expensive, each new person is a lot of time invested. We want to feel like you'll want to stay for a while.

Getting that feeling is hard, and of course there are no guarantees in life, but we don't treat people as fungible. You are you, and we can't just go down to the supermarket and replace you.

History is no predictor of the future, but it can be a signal.

[jmspring]

I think your equating hopping with age is misplaced. Yes, younger do hop more, there are plenty more senior people that maybe want something new and interesting - making it less about making more $$

[bruce511]

I'm pointing out that as an employer (not in a startup), I'm not that excited about hiring a hopper. We tend to want folk to hang around since we invest a lot of time and effort in their training, domain knowledge etc. Knowing that someone will move on in a couple years just isn't appealing to me.

[anonzzzies]

I would never hire a hopper willingly and I don’t quite know why some companies do. If I see a bunch of short arrangements on LinkedIn, then it goes on the ‘no’ pile. With the current market here, I have some hoppers begging to try them as ‘they promise they won’t hop’, but I have no way to enforce that; no one cares about options and timing bonuses and raises doesn’t work. We prefer people who stay 10+ years at a position and who don’t ’get bored’; we don’t want to be the TikTok attention span of saas; if people have that, they have to find something else.

[joe_guy]

Are there any open positions?

[area51org]

We didn't think of it as job-hopping, but yeah, staying at a job for about a year was not uncommon. The thinking was: demand is high, so if you aren't eventually recruited out and you really can't find anything better, maybe there's something wrong with you.

Yeah, that line of thinking can be bogus. I ended up staying at a startup for quite a while, and occasionally had to defend myself for not bailing out even after a couple years. Saying, "Stock options" and winking usually quieted down the critics. There are reasons (even beyond stock options, LOL) for staying at a job for more than just a little while.

BTW a lot of what others have said here (pay raises came from getting new jobs, employers saw long stints at a company as a potential warning sign that you aren't really very good) does ring true.

[williamcotton]

Employers viewing long stints as a negative have literally zero managerial accounting knowledge and are at best useless.

[kermatt]

.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.

[marstall]

this was me! carried on steadily until 2011 when i had my first kid. FTE since. My first contract was in 1996, 3 months at $50/hr in an office park in the east bay. Final contract was 6 months at $130/hr on the top floor of the Prudential Building in Boston. Being a Software engineer has been an amazing career!

[sen]

Yeah I mostly did 3-6mth contracts from ~96-2005 then a contract offered me a very generous FTE role to stay.

I loved contract work and probably could’ve done it forever but marriage/kids changed what I look for in a job.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I 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.

[MattPalmer1086]

I 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.

[MattPalmer1086]

The main thing is job hopping gives you bigger pay raises and greater experience than you get staying in one role. Some people don't like doing that, whether because they're already getting what they need or find it stressful.

Do what works for you.

[chrismcb]

When I was in highschool back on the early 80s I got a job paid internship. One of the programmers told me the average turnover in the industry was 3 years. I believe today the average turnover is 3 years. I don't think much has changed, and it has nothing to do with LinkedIn, glassdoor, etc.

[nickd2001]

Seems normal for 20-somethings, yes people did this in the 90s. Probably necessary in your 20s, to get varied experience and increase pay. 30-somethings can be more risk averse if they have young kids. By 40s and 50s, more chance someone knows what suits them and found a place that's a good fit and they want to stay, sometimes by then they have enough assets that they'll stay in a job they're happy even if pay is stagnant. 50s and older, do you really wanna do lots of job interviews, learn how a new company works? By the time you've done that a few times you lose appetite to keep doing it (not because you lose ambition, just, you know its not really gonna change your life and could be a bunch of hassle)

[Desafinado]

This resonates with me quite a bit. I took an unstable role in my twenties, had the motivation to upgrade to something much better, then settled down and started a family.

Eight years later and I've developed a deep skepticism about private industry and how companies are run, and know I'm working for an employer that's conducive to my mental health. Eventually you gain the recognition of how important that is, and how easily it can be lost once you have it.

[kcplate]

In my mid 50s and what I want is stability and benefits. I’ll happily stay in my current company and role for another 10 years for those things.

[JohnFen]

I 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.

[fruktmix]

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.

[nosequel]

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.

[JohnFen]

Whether or not Leetcode is a thing now depends on where you're applying. I have yet to encounter it, personally. I suspect that's because I am not interested in working for FAANG-like companies.

[JohnFen]

That hasn't been my experience at all, honestly. But I also have the advantage of having decades of experience. It might be different for others.

[ecoquant]

This view is just absurd.

Anything related to the web was not even consider "coding". HTML monkeys got paid nothing. The idea a HTML monkey was doing engineering was a laughable idea. There were no python jobs when python was brand new.

Sure, a good C or Perl programmer had no trouble getting a job in 1994. There were so many less jobs though overall.

Then in 2000 the entire industry goes on life support for 2-3 years.

The good times are now.

[rzzzt]

And they just let you use the new skills and not assign work based on your existing experience (the "old skills")?

[JohnFen]

It's rare that a project requires nothing but new skills. Almost every project I've worked on has mostly used my existing skillset, with the addition of one or two things that are new to me. No employer has ever expressed a problem with that to me.

[hasbot]

I did. Mostly because I kept finding myself on dead end projects. I'm not sure why I kept getting into that situation. After 2001 or so I had better luck but still usually switched gigs every couple of years. In my 28 year career starting in '86 the longest I stayed at one corporation was 7 years and I was on four different projects. Shortest was one month. Signed on and found they really had no plans for future projects. I'm not sure why they were hiring.

[Clubber]

Yes, the general rule was to stay at least a year though. My first two jobs were a hair under 2 years each. The first one was an unbearably toxic environment, but that's typical of your first job. I learned a lot because I did everything: networking, database, reports, server config, applications, integration, support, etc. All from scratch. The second I learned a lot but got stuck in a rut once I learned it. This was my big name company. I then did contracting for a year then the dot bomb + 9/11 happened, contract expired and I was out of work for 6 months and miserable. I learned that it might be beneficial to stick around a place for a while that seemed stable. First job after dot bomb was 8 years (learned a lot but stayed 2 years too long), 6 years (learned a lot and left at the right time), then 2 years (didn't learn much, tried to right a sinking ship) and currently 5 years (learned a lot and it was a file -> new experience).

I did a whole lot of projects on my own time to keep up to date with interesting new tech and make some side money. Nothing really blew up though.

[lunaticlabs]

I worked and continue to work in the video game industry, and I started in 1994. In my industry, the norm is not to leave mid project, and so job hopping frequency correlates directly to project length. My first couple jobs were about a year a piece, and that wasn’t unusual for the time. Those stretched out into 2 or 3 year gigs later as the games got bigger. Now that I work in mobile games, and live service has become a big moneymaker, this has changed. The industry is reasonably volatile, companies come and go quite a but, so job lengths of only a few years isn’t particularly frowned upon.

[tmaly]

Back in the 90s there was still this idea of working at the same company for life. Places like Kodak and Xerox use to have this.

Some of my adjunct professors in the Rochester area would tell me about this.

Things started to change after the dotcom crash and the acceleration of new technology taking out larger legacy firms.

[wojciii]

I changed jobs every 2-3 years as its the only method to get a proper raise in this country. I only worked 6 years in one place which was my first job.

So this worked for me so far. I guess it depends on who you are and the level of shit shoveling you can handle. I noticed that this level is surprisingly high for some people.

[dimal]

I 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.

[jmspring]

1996 to 2000, I was at 3 different companies. Then the company I joined in 2000, I was at for 5 years. Then a smattering of small companies and then two large companies.

These days people hop from job to job for more TC. For me it was about interesting projects (not always profitable).

[nosequel]

> 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. :)

[mamcx]

Maybe in USA only!

Back in the day being a programmer was definitively NOT "hot".

[2rsf]

It was hot (maybe not HOT) in the late 90's, me and people around me definitely hoped around.