All in favor for job hopping in Europe
All in favor for job hopping in Europe
Long eels in a small pond | Why do some loyal juniors never outgrow the places they were raised in?
“You know, we have been looking for someone rather long-term.” - said the HR manager a couple of months back. “We are somewhat sceptical about job hopping in general. We are looking for a stable person who is not afraid of the long-term “. The conversation occurred in a somewhat worn cubicle somewhere on the 5th floor of the office building. She printed my CV and had it in front of her on the table with some notes written next to my checkpoints. That was my second conversation with her, and I ‘passed’ their first round of Dante to be dumped on the second one.
I kind of got that vibe the moment I entered that boring hallway, so I was barely aware of the stuff she said. Instead, entranced by the mumbling about my greatness (and downsides, there were many), I was studying her tenure rewards nailed to the improvised wall of that cubicle.
One-year tenure reward. Two years. Five years & certificate of loyalty with distinction. There was a stock photo 3D model printed on A4 paper wrapped in plastic. Laminated but with weird brown stains all over it. Spurs of coffee, from the looks of it.
She definitely had a say in the company, and that was her kingdom. And I was knocking on her door, begging for a piece of fortune.
Well, obviously, this never happened.
I haven’t been to a physical interview for years now, but I have seen it happen virtually with LinkedIn praises & company trip photos. The tenure is usually expressed proudly by the years one stayed in the same place doing the very same stuff repeatedly. That feels stable. “Predictable in their loyalty” (you can put it in your resume if it describes you, no credit needed). In addition, there is a warm reassurance that they won’t be looking for a new person soon, which makes you more attractive as an employee.
“In der Normalität liegt die wahre Revolution”, as they said in a German comedy (The normality is the true revolution).
Well, it definitely isn’t, not really. Not in today’s world, where things change momentarily from good to ugly and back again.
And this post is about getting complacent. It is about getting stuck willingly & expecting people around you to slow down the same way you did.
That phrase above regarding ‘longer stays’ is accurate, though.
I have heard it a couple of times here in Europe, especially recently. Some recruiters in Poland & Alemania tend to get sweaty and nervous when they happen to see many changes on the resume. The definition of many differs significantly, but it will be fair to say that anything below two years is questionable here.
For some reason, tenure is considered noble and almost mature in its nature.
But I see it differently, and that’s what I am selling in this article, a perspective.
The work is packaged and planned in advance to supply a certain amount of value for a certain amount of tangibles an employee can trade for something.
3-6 months in - I am a valuable addition to the team. Economically speaking, the moment I am getting proficient at my job in a new place is the point in time when my returns start diminishing daily. A considerable number of jobs isn’t that challenging; let’s be honest. You are not building the Pathfinder, and neither do I.
The overall perceptive level of “challenge” gets lower as you gain more experience with the task at hand, rendering you more skillful.
Six months in (for regular tech jobs), you will be entrusted 90% of the jobs you were supposed to cover, and you handle the majority of those considerably well.
Unless you are an exception and plenty of things are going on in your field, your learning curve flattens here. There will be coming new pieces of knowledge down the road, but the number will decrease greatly. For some of you out there, it is the time to polish the stuff you learned.
A good pal of mine considers the next six months a payoff back to the company as their compensation. They have invested in you and waited for you to start bringing returns after you learn the ropes.
Twelve months in - the period ends, and the balance has been reached.
Note: depending on your professional score & jobs you take, the periods may range greatly, it is not about precise timing here, and there is no average.
Somewhere around this time, you start getting complacent and stop seeing new perspectives and opportunities (the majority of us).
Let me explain it - you just learned to drive a truck, so along with the old skills, you have got yourself an upgrade. This upgrade gets your valuation increased on the job market, but the current salary remains the same.
So it is fair to say the choice to stay is somewhere between the goalposts:
You have an exciting project, so you decide to stay (increasing your market value).
You have got yourself a mortgage or two to carry about. Or you are paid well (you might stagnate & render obsolete soon). You may be promised a promotion too, but it is not a done deal.
The change will be a disaster for the CV; you decide to stay to reach that magic x-year mark (the bare minimum in Poland is around one year, everyone does it; anything below this is almost a crime; I have seen some folks literally suffering for 2-3 months just to reach that point).
You have no ambitions whatsoever. No comments here; you don’t exist. Not really.
I have got to say a thing or two about these points (in no particular order):
The longer the stay, the worse the skills. As the tech moves rapidly, you are stuck with the same product, the same people and the tech stack. The variety of challenges you face isn’t great hence you may know some 20 ways to X, but that will be all you know. That’s some insect-level specialisation only a similar company would pay for. One could call it domain knowledge, but it is really an overspecialisation no one needs.
Longer stays mean slower growth - ladder-wise and purely financially. It is easier to leave the company (after that one year lol) to get a higher salary; and if you like the company, you might return having another boost in $$$ upon return. I.e. you get the boost twice just by moving around (I won’t say it is a solid practice, but some folks do that).
You never learn different perspectives coming from distinct fields. Say you are a Product Owner working in eCommerce. You understand the recommendation systems, so you move to a different project to find yourself using different software & different data. If you are open-minded, the new challenges will upgrade you quickly, as there will be problems you’ve never seen before, many of them. There will be mishaps too, the ones you haven’t encountered before.
If you’re starting your career, there is a chance for you to learn nothing at your first job(s). Some companies lack the skill, the people with experience or else. Some are living the illusion of knowing something and if they decide to stay long enough - the picture gets even worse. With tenure come raises, which produces self-important useless folks being terrible at the stuff they are supposed to know.
I have seen the latter a lot in the past nine years since I moved.
Smaller companies tend to hire juniors to help senior employees. At times too late, so the senior staff leaves (other reasons come into play too). This leaves our founder with a junior who supposedly learned enough to cover the entrusted field. It is a replacement everyone considers a good choice, plus it is cheaper, you can’t beat that.
The employee gains seniority by doing nothing, by staying long enough to become irreplaceable. Skill, efficiency or other traits have practically no advantages as no one can teach them anymore. The majority doesn’t even know how bad they are; no reference point to measure against as they never had any other jobs.
They never learn to become good at what they do.
Long eels in a small pond.
Sorry, I got carried away.
Generally speaking, this article was supposed to promote a higher frequency of change in tech so we have the staff we deserve.
But my second goal in writing all the above is having founders, executives, and managers reconsider job hopping.
Tenure isn’t always good, whatever your HR folks tell you. Ambition feeds the wolf and the wolfpack.
The tenures raise up freeloaders and sow ignorance.
Please remember to challenge the elders; some of them are as useless as their titles.