- Rank. It's hard to climb a ladder when you're jumping off of them.
My experience has been the opposite. To move up a rank I've had to shift company. In pretty much every company I have worked in I have moved further away from the top management every year I've stayed.I suspect this is to do with two factors: I have mostly been working in fast-growing companies; I have had managers who have had difficulty promoting from within — they see the people they have as hired for a role as the best people to do that role and new roles as requiring new people to do them. I don't mind missing out on a promotion as long as I am considered for a role and the person replacing me is more experienced (so I might learn from them). But sadly, the people coming in have generally been job hoppers with less experience. I would now consider myself a job hopper (despite having no intention of moving in the foreseeable future) — I've doubled my income and have a more satisfying job. I'd keep doing it if I didn't like my current job as much as I do. My advice is to jump in two's, a hop and a skip: do one for the career (and the wallet) then quickly jump sideways to one you prefer. You can then stay put for a while until things go stale or pear-shaped and you then plan the next hop-skip. It has worked well for me. |
There are cases where people go from one company (A) to another (B), and then after some time get back at A and get a better position. If they stayed at the same company the whole time they wouldn't be able to do that.