Apr '24 (edited) • 📈 Growth & Development
Why Job Hopping is a SWE Career Killer
The greatest returns in life come from the power of compound interest. This is true no matter the resource you're investing: money in the market, time spent mastering a skill, energy put into a relationship – you name it.
Yet many SWEs choose to interrupt the positive compounding forces in their career for a slightly better salary. They clearly haven't heard of the 5 buckets of success. 😉
"You can get a 20% raise every time you switch jobs," they think. And in a bull market, that might be true. But what are the hidden costs of constantly starting over with a new role, a new team, and a new company?
The answer lies in all the benefits you would accrue by consistently investing in a single job:
- Specific knowledge and applicable skills.
The first 3-6 months of any job are largely consumed by onboarding. For more senior positions, this number only increases. It takes time to understand how you can make an impact within a company, and even more time to bring those ambitions to fruition. If you're constantly switching jobs every year, you're forfeiting these valuable learning opportunities in exchange for a modest pay raise.
That's short-term thinking, not long-term thinking. You may earn more money with this strategy over the next 2 years, but how will it hamstring your earning potential over the next decade?
You'll also be spending a disproportionate amount of energy on interviewing for SWE positions. Especially at big tech companies, the skills required to be an effective interviewee are fairly different from the skills required to be an effective engineer.
Which do you want to become?
2. Mentorships and a strong professional network.
The #1 hack to becoming an expert in any domain is to find a great mentor. Someone who has been in your shoes and climbed to greater heights can help you chart a path to your goals in half the time it would've taken you alone.
Unfortunately, chronic job hoppers severely struggle to foster strong mentorships in their careers, because valuable relationships grow deep roots gradually. Even if a job hopper does manage to find a good mentor, they won't have much time to learn from them in a shared environment. What a shame.
Of course, this principle applies equally to any relationship in your professional network, not just mentorships. I don't need to convince you that a strong network is vital to your long-term career success. But consider that the quality of your professional relationships can play an outsized role in dictating your job satisfaction, too.
Sacrificing these relationships for higher pay may not only restrict your rate of learning and the growth of your network – it might just make you less happy in the long run.
3. Reputation and influence.
It's quite difficult to make a significant impact in a community without credibility. People need to trust you before they'll take any professional risks on your behalf.
Job hopping is a surefire way to waste all the sweat equity, power and influence you've built up at any one company. This makes it harder to find success in leadership positions, limits the opportunities for growth you'll be presented, and practically eliminates any chance of receiving an internal promotion.
Sure, you might get up-leveled upon chasing that shiny new gig once in awhile. But how long can you keep earning raises from interview skills alone? What will happen if you get hired into a position you aren't qualified for?
By all means, change jobs if your opportunities to take on new challenges, expand your network, or leverage your reputation have stagnated.
But before you jump at that 20% raise to go work for the other guys, consider the intangible costs incurred by interrupting the compound interest accruing in your current position.
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Why Job Hopping is a SWE Career Killer
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