Is Switching Jobs Too Often a Bad Thing?

Career Hot Potato asks: "I've been out of school for little more than a year and I have only good things to say about the job market. So far, there doesn't seem to be any lack of demand for a good .NET developer. I've got to admit, though, I feel a little disloyal at this point. Several great job offers have come my way and I've taken them. My resume is starting to make me look a bit restless and it worries me. Until now I've just chalked it up to 'I'm just settling in,' but now another opportunity has been dropped into my lap. Would I be digging my own grave by taking this job? It'd be my fourth job in 16 months but each offered a promotion and a 30% to 40% raise. I know better than to put a price on job satisfaction but I'm pretty certain I'd be happy there. Is being branded as a 'hot potato' enough to keep you from switching? What's your price on this stigma?"

How About Relationships

[value_added]

Is changing relationships too often a bad thing?

Change too often, and your possible significant other may see you as:

1. Superficial or fickle.
2. Incapable of forming a relationship.
3. Irresponsible, immature, or otherwise unable to deal with obligations.
4. Not someone with whom any sort of investment should be made.

Don't change often enough, and you may be considered:

1. Complacent, unmotivated and aspiring to nothing.
2. Generally undesirable, or without talent.
3. Ill-equipped to form any new relationship.
4. Odd.

Like most things in life, our opinions are arrived at in some context. An employer who is seeking a superstar employee will view a stable work record differently than someone looking for to fill an empty slot.

My advice? Try to be mature in your decisions and decide what's right for you. Commitments you do make, however, should be respected. Personally, I've never objected to seeing 3-5 year minimums, given that there's few companies like IBM, GE, etc. around these days, and even fewer Jack Welsh types that you'll be working for. People get divorced at an increasing rate, so it's more acceptable than in the past that an invidividual won't spend his or her career with a single company.

Re:Job hopping is bad for career

[daeg]

Your future employee prospects will question those four jobs during the 16 months (or will it be 5 jobs in 20 month). Your employee does not want to invest in someone who jumps ship in four months.

Jumping ship so often also cannot be easily explained when you have a long term pattern of it. If I were interviewing someone, regardless of what they said, it would raise major red flags. Despite good references, it would still be in the back of my mind that you left for a reason other than the next job offer. Did you screw a project up and left before they found out who or how bad it was? Did you make a bad move for the business? Did you just not know enough? Over your head? Did you not get along with coworkers?

Those are all things you do not want your interviewer to think.

Also, depending on how your new employer found you, it may have been a very, very expensive process. A lot of staffing/head hunter companies are locking companies into contracts, e.g., you will pay us for 6 months regardless of how long the employee works. So if you leave at 4 months, you're really, really screwing the company (out of work and out of (tens) thousands of dollars depending on your pay rate). Loyal or not, that will make ensuring those references are good ones more difficult over time.

Re:Job hopping is bad for career

[walt-sjc]

A resume with lots of short term jobs looks VERY bad to employers. While right NOW he is getting a lot of job offers, that probably won't ALWAYS be the case, and a "Job Hopping" resume will look bad in the case where he is actively looking for a new job. In other words, plan for the future (not just tomorrow.) If you have been a contractor, list your client jobs under a single "employment" section, with clients listed inside that so it's obvious what was going on, and that you weren't actually a job hopper.

Getting a new employee up to speed is expensive, and job hoppers tend to be weeded out very early in hiring process. Many times HR will even eliminate them from consideration before the hiring manager even sees the resume.

Re:There is a price to this. Be careful.

[jafiwam]

With large increases without changing industries or job roles (i.e. .NET developer) across several jobs in a short time I'd suspect OP is not negotiating hard enough.

If other companies can afford to swoop in with a raise like that, you didn't get what you should have out of the company that currently employs you when you took that job in the first place.

If you want to switch, go ahead, but spend a lot of time getting the most you can out of them and then get some negotiating skills under your belt (there's books for that, don't read them at work).

Better yet, just negotiate a higher pay rate within the job you have... you have good evidence the going rate is higher.