‘I’m proud of being a job hopper’: Seattle engineer’s post about company loyalty goes viral::undefined
Most people over-index on maximizing compensation or holding on to stability. But there’s more to work than money and stability. Work is about growth, building connections, working on things you care about, being challenged and creating a legacy.
Fucking legacy? Is this a joke? Who gives a shit about what shitty products they launch for FAANG companies? I certainly don’t - not beyond keeping my resume and portfolio up to date.
Compensation and stability are the only things that matter beyond basic working conditions and a non-toxic environment.
Well in my case I created a legacy by helping to unionize my workplace. I don’t even care if I’m ever remembered for that, not many legacies can be beat
Very nice! Unionization is the only way to make employera care about workers rights.
My legacy is my kids, and that’s time no company can take from me
Yet…
I don’t know man, I’ve always liked the idea of a project outliving me. Though for the sanity of future engineers I hope that is not the case. Today’s solutions are usually just tomorrow’s problems.
On a long enough timeline, all things end, and tech has hyper accelerated timelines.
I was once interviewed by a guy who asked for my biggest failure, which was basically “favorite open source project didn’t work out”. He let me know he worked on an early competitor of the X windowing system and really believed in it. And we laughed about that. (He hired me).
So yeah, I kinda agree with this job hopper guy on everything but legacy, but only because we really don’t get to have a say on what our code ends up meaning to anyone. The sands of time are nothing compared to the brutality of tech stack churn.
Seriously, nobody is going to remember you. Like 3 generations down, you’ll even be a tiny blip in your descendents world. Even most billionaires will be remembered through an encyclopedia entry and nothing else.
Man we’ve lost something along the way. When did our jobs become purely a means of money and contributing nothing to society.
When society began treating people as an exploitable resource.
100 percent. My work is treated as a commodity. Why wouldn’t I consider the company one as well?
I always found the name of the department “Human Resources” quite demeaning.
Mine turned into that when it stopped paying enough to provide me with basic needs.
If it’s fuck me, then it’s fuck all y’all too.
When they started treating employees and disposable cogs to be exploited.
The exact moment the employer only cared about money and not its employees or contributions to the society.
Man we’ve lost something along the way. When did our jobs become purely a means of money and contributing nothing to society.
This mythic past where our jobs meant “more than money” and we “contributed to society” never existed anywhere
When capitalism. That’s when.
Edit: to clarify, it wasn’t much better before capitalism. But it was less all-encompassing. Feudalism was a shitty structure, worse even than capitalism tbh. But it was much easier to escape it. Not just in the “survivalist hippie camp” that still exists now. But even in everyday life. The system wasn’t shaping every facet of human existence. Only production relations (which is the big one yes). But capitalism has shaped everything around us. Our places of work, sure, but our personal lives. Our inner lives. Everything has been commodified. Mental health, religion, wellness, friendships, love and relationships, families, sickness, children etc. etc. etc… That is the main reason capitalism is worse than anything before it. No other system had the capacity to destroy the planet. None. To destroy all life in it. All in the name of profit. An immaterial, formless concept. Not even a real thing. And there’s not much we can do it seems. I mean there is, and I think it’s pretty clear. But I bet even that gets commodified soon. Bring on the politicians/capitalists death match reality game shows I guess…
Probably around the time they took away pensions
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Ain’t nobody giving increases like new bosses.
You want loyalty? That’s what pensions were for. Fuck your 401k, I can invest myself, thanks.
You want loyalty? Give better increases.
At the end of the day, software developers desire two things: An interesting technical challenge, and fair pay/benefits for the work done. If you can’t provide either, you have a problem. Not the employee.
Hell, many will forego one for the other.
I’ve known quite a few people that were paid under the market value because they liked their job and tasks. I’ve took a salary hit once at the start of my career because I hated my job too much and wanted the job I was interviewing for. Didn’t regret it too. Though two years after I accepted a job at FAANG.
Companies like to straddle the technical challenges appeal where they’re innovative risk takers but don’t you dare try to improve on any existing system. If they just want firefighters then say so and accept that people aren’t going to be passionate about it.
Companies don’t even take risks anymore. They wait for some startup to take all the risks, acquire them, and integrate some partial abomination into their existing product
You should add autonomy to that list too
Fuck your 401k, I can invest myself, thanks
You can’t match your own contributions, though.
Often times the ‘match’ isn’t matched fully until you’ve been an employee for x years. Ask your HR department about their vesting schedule! 🤓
Well… yeah. That’s how they use benefits to encourage loyalty.
When I hit 5 years, I vest and my employer begins double-matching, including retroactive contributions. I put in 7%, so in another 2 trays they’ll put 70% of my annual salary into my retirement all at once.
It heavily encourages loyalty because it’s genuinely a great benefit. I have no problem with that.
I work for money, and the reward for loyalty is more money.
Beats the hell out of a pizza party.
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It’s only up to 6% though.
It’s still free money. Between maxing that ans espp, I basically got a free $16k last year.
Yeah it’s free money but it’s not as much as what grandfather would have gotten in his pension
Spot on.
Companies get mad when the employees look at their jobs the way execs look at their employees. Cue outrage. The only reason they mad is because they own the newspapers, too.
The audacity of these removed. I have a mercenary outlook on work too. If you love me, keep paying me good.
I’m not loyal to anybody, I’m a demon / I have no loyalty for anyone, never did, never will
I’ve been practicing the mercenary method for about 5 years now. Since then I’ve significantly increased my salary and I’ve been a lot happier at work. That on top of learning to say “no” has improved my career life exponentially. NO loyalty. No unpaid overtime. No going above and beyond for a company that isn’t going to return the favor.
What about when they do return the favour, though?
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time on the other side of this issue, I’ve found people tend to assume I’m being shitty even as I am actively going out of my way to accommodate and support them.
One time I moved someone from hourly to salary because he was very receptive to guidance and was learning very quickly - essentially I didn’t want him to be compared on hourly terms as his pay increased, since the cap for more independent salaried employees was much higher. I was kinda risking my own ass in doing this since he had neither experience nor education, but I saw incredible potential, and felt it made sense. As part of this, to ensure he wouldn’t be shortchanged by the conversion, I had payroll add 5K when they switched him. I expected this would be well received, but he had so many concerns that made absolutely no sense. We got through it, but in the end it seems he thought that all of the extra time I was spending personally to teach him a new role and help him get from ~40K to 100K within a year and a half was something to be wary of.
I have many stories like this. Sometimes when I feel hurt by people I’ve been so loyal to, I get urges to stop being compassionate and stop prioritizing their concerns so heavily. I don’t think I’ll ever change, but it is extra exhausting to go through this stuff over and over only to be lumped in with folks who do treat people like shit.
Perhaps the model is just fundamentally broken, and there’s no way to win as long as there is any sort of power differential in the relationship (implied or otherwise). More and more I feel that that is what I’m up against, and no amount of concern for an employee’s wellbeing will ever be able to overcome this.
So, my question is not rhetorical - I realize this isn’t my post, but I’m super curious about others’ perspective on this: are you open to the idea that at some point in your career someone might actually care about your wellbeing? Will it matter to you, or just … get whatever you can, and never stop trying to fuck the system?
I’m currently at a job that just leaves me alone to do my job and gives me opportunities to learn new skills as they present themselves, none of these extra roles have came with a pay raise, but I havent had an OK paying job in YEARS where I actually look forward to showing up to work the next day (which I do feel about this one). There are different things a job can provide once the bills have been paid, and I’m sure SOME of your fellow co-workers/employees notice you giving a shit about them
If I truly felt a company, or someone at the company, cared for me and my career I’d have no problem putting in the extra effort. Unfortunately it is a rare occurrence and most of the time decisions are revenue/cash flow related and it doesn’t matter how much a company cares. At the end of the day, no matter how good things are where you work, it’ll always come down to the bottom line and what value you provide vs what you are costing the company.
they dont even pay enough for our loyalty lmao
We’re soldiers of fortune we’ll fight for no country but we’ll die for good pay. Under the flag of the greenback dollar or the peso down Mexico way…
Companies are forcing return to office policies as a covert way of doing layoffs without compensation, if they’re not kicking people out with the thousands and are shocked to discover workers are now not particularly loyal to employers.
They also hate it when employees use the exact same economic reasoning as they do to maximize revenue and take opportunities.
Companies: “You are nothing but a cog in a machine. You will be placed in the machine if and only if you help the machine generate maximum profit. If your presence ever causes the machine to generate less than maximum profit you will be summarily discarded.”
Employees: “Okay, so you try to get the maximum profit for you and I try to get the maximum profit for me.”
Companies: surprisePikachu.jpg
I’ve averaged ~12 job hops in the last 6 years and I wouldn’t change a thing. Compensation growth has been roughly 6.05x. The previous 6 years was…maybe 3? And maybe 2x.
I owe the big corps nothing. I meet expectations and deliverables and I support my team however I can, but that’s about it.
But eventually don’t you risk being unhireable with this sort of work history? We recently hired someone who had a similar work history and I remember that being very much a red flag when we hired them. Turns out the red flag should have been payed attention too since history is a good predictor of future behaviors.
As a hiring manager I would think twice about investing anything in an employee who jumps around THAT much. I mean I don’t blame you, I’ve had the same job for 23 years and I could be making a lot more money. But salary is not everything and I love my job. My mental health is very much an extra benefit.
I could see that if they were all W2. But near the tail end of my more aggressive efforts I started branching into 1099 work and they don’t mind at all.
I also have a much wider breadth of technology experience now so it really opened the doors on the opportunities I qualify for.
I’ve shaved something like 5-7 years off my retirement age with this short stint. Even if I just coast at a single job from here on out, I think it was worth it. You are 100% correct that salary isn’t everything. I’m really hoping to grow the 1099 portfolio at this point, there’s something a little freeing about it, weirdly enough.
C’mon, if you’re an independent contractor you’re not “job hopping.” Why did your original comment call them hops? You’ve just got new and different clients.
Tail end. Like the last 6 months of that entire span.
I hadn’t thought about this. Yeah if its contract work it’s expected and that’s a totally different situation.
Also hiring manager here and I agree with you–I wouldn’t hire even the best person if they displayed this behavior.
For most people, this is the case. But for the super elite tech worker, this is not the case–they are sought after. The stories you read here are from the elitest of the elite CS/CE program graduates.
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Entitlement, narcissism, chose your poison. This person believes they deserve more and more and more and finds ways to justify their behavior.
That said, I agree that corporations are bullshit so I get it. This person isn’t a hero, though.
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I suspect that a lot of these get into companies during those gigantic hiring waves that result in massive layoffs a year later.
Easier and more straightforward to get a position and salary promotion by way of hopping jobs than it is to do within the same company.
It’s really sad that this is the state of things but it is how it is.
Sadly true. In my earlier years I watched new hires sometimes start at the same or more than I was getting after 1-2 mediocre raises.
At one of my last longer term jobs, I was miffed at the lack of compensation increases over the last 2 years, so I told them I was quitting. I even said I don’t have anything lined up, but I just can’t continue knowing the market is paying more. They ended up magically finding a 20% increase for me - where was that before?
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Honestly, nobody has ever asked (yet).
Can I ask what you do for a living? In Canada, such gains are basically impossible on income. If you were earning $70k as a low level software developer, there’s no way you could, in 6 years, without skill upgrading and promotions, change that into $400k+
Please don’t extrapolate based on what you read here. The people who are saying they do this are among a very elite group of people who came out of high-end technical programs. They have the pedigree and are sought after so they can do this as much as they like. You most likely cannot get away with this.
There’s also the chance that any one of us is lying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That is also very true.
This is also the internet. So people lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of people claiming they job hop and get these huge pay bumps were lying about it.
I graduated with a 2.8 GPA. I learned everything on the job(s). My first few years were 80 hour weeks not because I had to, but because I wanted to learn [everything I didn’t learn in school].
My friend never graduated and makes way more money than I do (I believe post-tax $600k but I’m only about 90% sure). Software Engineering is a booming arena right now if you have the right buzz words on your resume and soft skills for the interview. I say booming now, but Sep-Dec last year were rough. However, the market for CS job opportunities is bouncing back.
It’s a game that can be played and succeeded at, regardless of pedigree, but aptitude matters. Even my favorite bartender at my local dive bar is studying it in their free time and, frankly, they’re getting pretty good at it fast. I think they’ll be just fine.
Software Dev/Eng. Largely Angular/Vue, C#/Go, SQL Server/Postgres, and Azure/AWS/GCP full stack development.
I’m not sure how tech pay works in Canada. I know in the UK and surrounding that tech pay is significantly lower than the US.
I am in the US and tech pay here can be criminally high (or criminally low). A lot of people chase RSUs, but I chase base pay.
My friend went from a $15/hr IT Support job to a $500k+ (TC) in 4 years hopping 4 times.
It’s stupid money that I assume won’t last forever so doing my best to save/donate what I can now.
Data Center Engineer now. But I have an associate in electronic engineering from a community College.
2010-2013 Walmart. Started $7.65 an hour Ended $10.60 only reason I got a raise because of minimum raise increases Graduated college 2013-2016 left for a niche small electronics company (laser tag) $10 an hour. Got experience in my degree 2016-2018 left to work for Perdue chicken manufacturering plant 15.10 ended at 15.65 2018-2020 casino started at 15 ended at 15.65 2020-2022 data center for bank started at $24 ended at $26 2022-now data center different bank with a union started at $30 now at $32.30
Most the companies want to give me 3% or less every year one company kept putting off talks of raises. I kept taking more and more responsibility and no one would giving me a decent raise or pay me what I was worth.
I got $8.45 in raises from companies lots of the big chunk amounts came from minimum raise increase and work place adjustments. Every increase that they gave me for a yearly raise was 3% or less. Me leaving to another company got me $16.20 of pay increases.
111% increase from raises and 212% increase from job hopping in the last 14 years
That can vary widely across industry and circumstance. I’ve stayed with the same company (granted through a couple mergers) and grown my comp more than 10x in that time.
And while I’m not at all advocating for being any more loyal to a company than they are to you, I can definitely say seeing a big string of quick flips in jobs in their resume is a big red flag for me when hiring people.
I don’t mind people having a practical attitude to comp, but in my line of work at least I find it takes a good few months of orientation for someone to start adding real value anyway. Definitely not something I’m looking to repeat all the time with folks I hire. Granted, I also work damn hard to earn some loyalty and put “my money where my mouth is” for my people, I’d often not the case.
In any event, I’d definitely agree you’ve got to keep a close eye on your own self interest. You may run into bosses and companies that will do right by you like I have, but there is sure as hell no guarantee of it and precious little way to tell the difference till you’ve spent time there.
He also noted higher pay and easier promotions. “I had a 20% pay bump moving from Amazon to Microsoft for the same role and job responsibilities,” Nguyen wrote.
Industries promote this, especially the publicly traded ones, whether they realize it or not (I’m sure they do). It looks worse on a corporate balance sheet and subsequent earnings quarterly earnings report to pay someone 20% more than to hire someone at a new pay scale. It’s absolutely insane that we’ve gotten ourselves to this point as a society, but here we are.
I think it’s also very acceptable to have full time contractors on the payroll with no end date for the same reason.
why?
Classify it as non-recurring professional services and it’s an EBITDA addback.
I don’t understand how it works out for them though. Hiring is so much more expensive than retaining staff, not just the higher salary, but the loss of productivity from losing someone with institutional knowledge and needing to train the new person which can take a really long time to get them up to speed.
You see if you slice the cake enough times. There becomes more cake.
That’s called accounting.
When I moved to Silicon Valley the HR guy at my company was an old hippie who looked out for people. He told me the silicon valley way to get a raises is to tell your company that you have decided to take another job because it pays more, and you don’t want to leave, but you have personal obligations like your girlfriend being pregnant that mean you have to take a higher paying job. Then if they don’t give you a raise you find a new job that will.
And when you take the raise they’ll give you all the shit work until they find a replacement for you. If you legit have an offer from a different company take it.
If you legit have an offer from a different company take it.
No way. You might walk through the door at the other company, realise it’s a horrible place to work, and hand in your resignation at lunch time.
Take the pay rise. If they fire you a month later, you’ll at least get a big severance package to cover your living expenses while you look for a new job. If you quit, then quit again, you’re going to be delivering pizza’s or something while you look for a decent paying job.
You might walk through the door at the other company, realise it’s a horrible place to work, and hand in your resignation at lunch time.
Do you not have any references at the company? Because that is the only way this could really happen. Personally I don’t blindly apply to a company without having any inside references.
Once you strong arm your employer to giving you a raise you’ve painted a big target on your back and you’ve announced that you’re willing to walk over money. It spells insecurity to them and the next thing you’ll find is the door hitting you on the way out.
it’s consdierably easier to find a job when you have a job.
Don’t knock delivering pizzas.
So been working as a software engineer for twenty years now and seen the steady decline of workers. Started out as the last straggler for a pension, rapid decline of insurance, crap ass 401ks, the lack of employee investment and the chacing of the median salary.
I tell every new hire to spend a year here, get your experience, then look for another job, come back a few months later if you really like the work.
I mean honestly, fuck these corporations, they don’t care or have loyalty to their employees and you can be screwed with a 401k anywhere so get you pay bump and fuck their expectations of loyalty.
How is this even considered an article? The title is half the length of the article.
It was a rather shallow article.
This is something that is still better in Germany. Companies are forced to have somewhat of an employee loyalty and some corporation go well above what the law forces them to (like VW). The way things are going lately, it feels like this won’t be like this forever. But atm it’s still one of the good things about Germany.
there absolutely is no loyalty from an organisation.
This is why I jump ship without any further thought or feeling of remorse. They would throw you out on your butt without a second’s hesitation whenever they feel like it.
I’d go out of my way not to hire someone who has worked for shit companies like FAANG/MAANA.
If you hop jobs, I’m not hiring you*. Yes I make those decisions. No I do not expect you to stay forever, but 1yr at a time I can barely get productivity out of you. Some of these people do 6 months. To everyone that knows, all that looks like is grifting your probationary period. Get hired, assigned tasks, fail spectacularly, get booted out or leave before they find out you’re incompetent.
*Except one guy. He was a brilliant weirdo that job hopped because no other company would bend their policies to fit weirdo’s requirements about work and life. He was exceptionally brilliant, like dozens of patents under his name, and literally invented novel ways of doing things. He got a try. His weirdness evolved into even weirder, we let him do his thing and whatever because again, absolutely brilliant. And he’s still there and happy enough.
If you hop jobs, I’m not hiring you*
That’s okay, someone will and for more than you’re offering
You saying you wouldn’t hire them doesn’t matter. They will get hired elsewhere. If people are leaving there after such a short time regularly, than that says more about the company culture. It means you aren’t good enough to retain employees.
For anyone reading this who it scares off, by job hopping 3 times in my first 5 years of employment post-college I just under tripled my salary.
Move early move often and keep interviewing while you have a job as it lets you be the pickiest in choosing where you’ll have to spend your working hours.
Companies overwhelmingly have no loyalty to you whatsoever (how I wish I was in a co-op so this wouldn’t be so), so aggressively pit them against eachother regarding your labor.
