‘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.
Man we’ve lost something along the way. When did our jobs become purely a means of money and contributing nothing to society.
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.
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…
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
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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.
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.
Who invented Google home? Like, what’s the person’s name? What about the person that designed the Sonos Move?
There’s no legacy. There’s business objectives and getting those completed so upper management can move their plans forward. Who gets them there is irrelevant.
Google did
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Agreed, something has gone wrong if I individually am so important that what I leave at a job is considered a legacy.
All I want is for the things I work on to be useful for the lifetime of the product and some appreciation from management for putting in the work while getting paid well.
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.
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.
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.
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 think the answer to this is actually fairly simple. When the bossman tells me something’s in my best interest, I’m just immediately suspicious. Like I know in your example it maybe is, you’ve laid out your logic and all of that. But you have to realize that for every good boss, there’s probably 15 bad ones. Western economic, labour systems and power structures have been so lopsided for generations, that it’s literally hard coded in us to be suspicious. Whenever someone comes at me from work with a big smile and excitement, my flags FLY to red alert. Because I’m statistically far more likely to be on the raw side of the deal.
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…
“Having hired over 500 engineers personally in my career, if your resume came across my list, I would definitely pass.”
Heh. A job seeker with three FANG companies on their resume does not give a shit if this random person would bin their resume.
Also, I’m trying to imagine a scenario where having needed to hire 500 people, personally, in a single career isn’t embarrassing.
Edit: “You think you suck at retention? Let me tell you how my year went!”
It’s not about having FANG in your job history. It’s about switching companies three times in three years.
Where I work, we tend to lose money on new hires for an average of the first six months. That’s time where not only the new engineer isn’t very productive, but other engineers on the same team aren’t very productive. They’re sinking time into difficult conversations like “yeah you need to go back and redo the last two weeks of work — it’s perfectly good code, but you used library X, and we decided four years ago to is use library Y because X has this rare edge case issue when combined with library Z which we also use…”.
If someone only works with us for a year… we haven’t made enough of a profit to cover the losses in the first half of their employment with us. If you want to work for us, we’re not going to force you into a multi-year contract but we do want to be as confident as possible that you’re going to stay here long term.
I wouldn’t turn someone down for changing jobs three times in three years… but I would definitely ask what happened. And they better answer with something that will happen at my company.
I’m trying to imagine a scenario where having needed to hire 500 people, personally
It takes, what, 10 minutes to read a resume? 30 minutes interview someone? Lets round that up to one hour to cover discussing two promising candidates with a colleague… it’s still only 500 hours of work. Or 12 weeks. Obviously you also need to read all the resumes and do interviews with people who were turned down but over an entire career working in HR for a large company… 500 people isn’t that many at all.
Your second paragraph tells you who you’re trying to find in your third paragraph: FAANG. Hiring 500 engineers and bragging about it something you can do when you’re just interested in shareholder value not customer experience.
I wouldn’t hire the guy in the article because I haven’t seen strong candidates come from FAANG and I’ve been very happy to lose the people I did to FAANG because they weren’t good engineers, they just knew how to leetcode and tunnel vision trivia.
Hasn’t it changed from FAANG to MAANA?
Took me a while to figure this one out - FAANG to MAANA: Facebook --> Meta Apple Amazon Netflix Google --> Alphabet
I like Magma better (Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon). I know Google is under alphabet but it’s still the main company. And Netflix isn’t really cutting edge anymore, so I’d put Microsoft above them tech wise.
But most importantly, magma just sounds cool.
No, magma sounds hot.
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IMO this is exactly what happens. the sort of person who acts this way isn’t interested in becoming a better person and learning, they were in it for the diploma and the paycheck. this person stopped growing somewhere in high school.
Sometime who’s hired that many people would understand how job hunting works more. If you’ve worked at 3 FANG companies in 3 years, you’re not quitting your job then interviewing, you’re interviewing while you’re employed and only quitting when you’ve secured the next job. Also, with a beefy resume like that, companies will be reaching out to you to poach you, and in those cases they can’t complain about the work history because they’re the ones trying to steal you away.
It certainly wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone over a few decades who’s built several teams at a number of different companies. That would be about one person a month over forty years.
“Having hired over 500 engineers personally in my career, if your resume came across my list, I would definitely pass.”
Heh.A job seeker with three FANG companies on their resume does not give a shit if this random person would bin their resume.
You’d be surprised. Anecdotes what they are, I know a stunningly-capable dev with an ROTC accelerated BEng degree and a BSc+MSc chaser, an international resume including Snap, FB, Apple, A-I shops, instruction, leading teams; it’s heroic.
Been out of work for months after a start-up imploded and ghosted the dev and didn’t send the RoE nor apparently also tax withholdings and all manner of retroactively-shady stuff. Start-ups are risky, kids, even if the idea is amazeballs-great.
It happens in this job and this market. It’s happened before, and it will happen again if we live or have lived long enough.
Also, I’m trying to imagine a scenario where having needed to hire 500 people, personally, in a single career isn’t embarrassing.
Consider a career that spans more than a year.
At my last dotcom, a vPBX 10 years ago, they were hiring 2 people a day for a year. Every damned day. The niche was huge and they were gutting the local market of sound and kernel and Kafka and mqtt people. Very minimal ditching, all new nerds.
So that’s 700+ in just a year. And people work at their jobs for often far more than that: sometimes they make a career out of it, my dude.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
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.
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.
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.
I think jumping after 1 year is a bit extreme, but after 3 years (my target was 2) I landed a new job I start soon! 47% salary increase plus better benefits and more time off - there’s no way my current employer could ever match that!
I got a 73% raise for jumping ship after just under four years at my old job, back in
20212022. I was getting nothing but gaslighted when I pointed out that my salary was becoming a bit under the indicated going rate. Which to me quickly indicated that they saw me as disposable, as they refused to respond to clear and well laid out backup. Then the phone rang, so I mean that was that. I did what disposable people do, and jumped out the window.I’ve since gotten one promotion and about another 30% increase from my starting rate, which means I’m making more than double what I was just two years ago. But I’m not resting on that. I’m always watching and thinking about what’s next. It’s a competition for my labour, and I will more often than not side with the highest bidder. I don’t give a shit about tenure, or my potential growth, or my so-called future within your company. Unless you show me the path, a well laid out timeline with mutually defined goals that you clearly will stick to, and the money. Then I might care. But even then, I’m always a bit weary, and it’s almost always more rewarding to chase external opportunities and promotions. That said, I’ve also never had an employer that’s truly believed in me and actually been legitimately concerned with my growth before. It’s always been take take take, false promises and failures to actually deliver on insinuated opportunities when the chips fell. Ones mileage may vary though.
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.
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.
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.
