[HN Gopher] How long do software engineers stay at a job? (2021)
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How long do software engineers stay at a job? (2021)
Author : sebastianconcpt
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-09-26 18:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developerpitstop.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developerpitstop.com)
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| My usual timeline at a new job requires an average of ~6 months
| to be effective. After that I work hard the next year or so on
| leading projects and major features. I try to build my network of
| influence by contributing to cross-team projects, and if possible
| work on internal common libraries, forked open source projects.
| See if I can file patents.
|
| This should lead to a promotion within ~2y, less than 3y; if that
| does not happen, I start looking for either a new team or new job
| all together.
|
| (In some companies interviewing for another team requires the
| same amount of effort of interviewing outside. I usually pursue
| both.)
|
| If I don't get the promotion, it usually means that either the
| team I work with does not have enough impactful work to justify a
| promotion, or manager is not interested (capable) in sponsoring
| for one.
|
| Either way, I have reasons to move on.
| angarg12 wrote:
| This might work early in your career, but should plateau very
| quickly.
|
| Junior to mid level in 2 years is easy.
|
| Mid level to senior in 2 years is doable. It would definitely
| be considered fast in most big tech.
|
| Senior to Staff in 2 years is not gonna happen. I'm not saying
| it's impossible, but it's probably extremely rare.
|
| I agree with the concept of optimizing for growth and learning
| in your current role, but people should also be aware that
| getting to the next level is aprox. exponentially harder the
| further up you go.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| Yes and no, very much depends on landing in the right team
| with the right manager. That's why it is important to realize
| it asap, and move on if that is not the case. So that you
| don't waste your time.
|
| I also find very important to discuss the promotion with your
| manager in 1-1 and be clear that's what you are aiming for.
| Just to set the right expectations.
|
| Staff to Senior Staff is totally doable in ~3y.
| desc wrote:
| Apropos of nothing, and anecdotally: 2 years seems to be about
| the length of time it takes for a solution to become the next
| problem.
| mcguire wrote:
| Always get out before you have to answer hard questions about
| what you did six months or a year ago.
| unwise-exe wrote:
| 1. This is for the San Francisco area. Does it generalize to
| software development more generally?
|
| 2. It sounds like this is from polling people about time at their
| _current_ job rather than how long it took to leave their
| _previous_ job? With how fast the field keeps growing, how much
| skew is there from recent entrants still at their first job?
| mr_tristan wrote:
| While this is interesting, I'm very curious if there's any
| analysis that looks at other pressures that might happen in tech
| that's different from the broader business world. Are
| acquisitions more frequent?
|
| I say this, because in my 20+ year career, this has preceded most
| of my job changes:
|
| 1. A major business event: usually acquisition, or one time, a
| CEO just quitting outright
|
| 2. A major management restructuring from 1 week to 12 months
|
| 3. New managers try to make their mark and trigger death marches
| or just erode confidence
|
| 4. I leave and get a decent pay bump and realize my mental health
| is better
|
| I actually consider myself to be pretty conservative about job
| changes. I'm at about 3.5 years per position. I've probably left
| money on the table too.
| dontblink wrote:
| Switching every two years is a red flag for employers and is
| called out during hiring in many companies.
|
| Every 3-4 years seems to indicate a better uptick in interest /
| offers in my experience. Otherwise the concern from many Hiring
| Managers is: I'm going to invest my time and effort (~6 mos) in
| training, and that will be lost very quickly.
|
| In my view a promotion is every 3-4 years as well (although it
| can be faster) at the FAANG companies. If someone is able to get
| a promo, that is the best time to start looking. It establishes
| that the individual is on an upwards trajectory so it makes it
| easier to hire them and convince others if the company is
| committee based on hiring decisions.
| pooya72 wrote:
| I was just reading a study that said: "Developers do not become
| fluent for at least three years in large projects."[^1] Which is
| sad cause I'm one of those people that like to master their work,
| but it feels unfair if your making less than others who just
| joined.
|
| [1]:https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1882291.1882313
| sime2009 wrote:
| You know what a great way to complete screw any tech company with
| a complicated product or service is? People constantly leaving
| after less than 2 years of service. It means no one knows how
| things work or how to do their jobs. It creates general chaos and
| stress for everyone, all the while costing a ton of money and
| being very ineffective. This frequent job hopping is a symptom of
| something being clearly wrong.
| johndavid9991 wrote:
| In our company, we have people who are with us for 7 to 11 years
| now. Our Mid to Senior Devs are with us for at least 6 years on
| average.
|
| Culture plays an important role in keeping the people, it's not
| always about the money.
| kache_ wrote:
| Why would you operate at the next level for a year to get a
| promotion, when you could just job hop and get the pay right now?
| I call that getting scammed.
|
| I'm job hopping as soon it's beneficial to me. You can deal with
| the loss of my velocity I'm sure.
|
| My advice is to make sure that your manager knows this. It's a
| business relationship after all.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I always find these articles a bit blind.
|
| If the guys hoped a job every 6 month for the past 4 years then
| they've been hired _every_ _single_ _time_ they hopped. People
| hire job hoppers. If they didn't then they'd (by definition)
| stop job hopping. Sure maybe after the 10th hop it'll catch up
| to you but by that point (in this scenario) you've had the
| equivilant of 10 14.8% raises which IIUC is a total ~404.6%
| raise. So you're now "stuck" at a job making 4x what you did 5
| years ago.
| bink wrote:
| In my experience someone job hopping every 6 months isn't
| usually doing so because they've found a better role or
| better compensation. That's usually, but not always, a result
| of under performance. Most companies are reluctant to fire
| someone within the first 6 months and it can take that long
| to gather the evidence necessary to avoid a wrongful
| termination suit. To me it's less a sign of ambition and more
| a sign of someone who interviews well but doesn't work well.
|
| In this market there are always companies who will hire
| someone who job hops, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
| kache_ wrote:
| what's really hilarious is that I followed a job hop every
| year and my job comp actually increased 6x over 4 years
| some_furry wrote:
| > Sure maybe after the 10th hop it'll catch up to you but by
| that point (in this scenario) you've had the equivilant of 10
| 14.8% raises which IIUC is a total ~404.6% raise.
|
| 10 raises at 14.8% each hop is 1.148^10 or 3.976 not 4.046
|
| But still, you end up at about 4x
| dasil003 wrote:
| It's crazy what a 14-year bull market capped off with a WFH
| tech-boosting pandemic will do to SWE salary expectations. In
| these conditions, market rate outpaced wage increases at most
| companies, so you would need to hop to keep up.
|
| However under normal circumstances job hopping will plateau
| pretty quickly, and if you don't have a promotion it starts
| to look pretty bad to hiring managers. I certainly would
| never hire a staff engineer who was not promoted to L6
| equivalent in a company with a strong tech reputation.
| oxff wrote:
| I think longer than 3 years and you are committing yourself to
| wage depression, from what I've read from various hiring
| managers.
| acchow wrote:
| Depends on the trajectory of stock price.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| If you can get a 20% bump in TC by moving that's irrespective
| of stock price so you'll take net loss staying put no matter
| what happens with stocks.
| acchow wrote:
| I mean depends on the trajectory of the stock price of the
| company you are leaving.
|
| If you joined with a 4-year vesting package when the stock
| price was $10 and now it has risen to $30, you will
| probably be taking a big pay cut by leaving after 3 years.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Right but if you can predict stock prices that accurately
| you should be running a hedge fund not working as a SWE.
| codingdave wrote:
| I've found 3-4 years to be a better target. Less than that just
| ends up being lateral moves for a bigger check, and you plateau
| after 10 years or so without ever having gained any deep
| experience to push you past that plateau. On the other hand, more
| than 4-5 years entrenches you in one way of doing things, and you
| have a harder time jumping to a completely new environment.
|
| So while I'll trust that the statistics presented in the article
| are accurate, I'm not sure trying to target your personal career
| to match the statistics is wise.
| acchow wrote:
| Plenty of high performers also discover organizational
| structure or politics isn't serving their upward trajectory
| well so change companies before waiting for their ever-
| approaching promo
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Kind of off topic, but is now a good time to job hop? I'm
| approaching the 4 year mark at FAANG and I'm kind of ready to see
| what's out there, but given the economy and such, I can't tell if
| this would actually be extremely stupid.
| lesuorac wrote:
| IMO, going somewhere with a stock based compensation is best
| done in a down market. Most of FAANG's stock price is going to
| be higher next year or 2 years from now than it currently is so
| getting a large 4yr grant is best done now.
|
| Also, if you can't find another job right now you don't have to
| quit your current job so the downside is really the experience
| of interviewing.
| tsarchitect wrote:
| You can always start job hunting and interviewing to see what
| is out there. Until you get a contract in front of you I
| wouldn't quit just yet.
| rockostrich wrote:
| The software engineer tenure dataset is probably a really weird
| one where there's a normal bell curve with an average around 2
| years and then another much flatter curve that goes from ~4-12
| years for the folks with golden handcuffs at pre-liquidity event
| companies.
|
| Edit: I don't know how or why this is on the front page of HN.
| This seems like a super low traffic/low effort blog.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| >Edit: I don't know how or why this is on the front page of HN.
| This seems like a super low traffic/low effort blog.
|
| I agree, at the moment I'm writing this comment the post has
| only 8 points too. Isn't it a bit to low for the front page?
| jedberg wrote:
| 8 points in 15 minutes is a pretty typical for the front
| page. Early votes have a lot of momentum. If it doesn't get
| more points soon it will fall just as quickly.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Why _argumentum ad populum_ should be the ruling criteria for
| that?
| tsarchitect wrote:
| There is absolutely nothing unprofessional about job hopping.
| Before I went full-time contractor I would get so mad that I
| dedicated my time and effort to BigCo and the new dev coming in
| is getting a way bigger salary than I. As a contractor I'm very
| satisfied with my rate, and when I start a new contract (6-9
| months later) I make sure my rate increases. Do I need to be
| there for 2-4 years to understand the problem I was working on?
| No. I get hired to do a job. I do it. And then I go on my merry
| way. A lot of the engineering is essentially the same from shop
| to shop (except for some custom bash infrastrure) that I have
| specialized on a set technologies. (which happens to be what most
| companies use anyways)
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| "[FAANG] jobs tend to be quite demanding and require developers
| to put in a lot of extra hours when compared to smaller
| businesses."
|
| They're more demanding to _get_, I wouldn't say they're more
| demanding to do. At a FAANG there's also more scope for intra-
| company hops too. People frequently switch teams immediately
| after getting promoted.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| FAANG jobs attract the type of people with work ethic and
| ambition but they most likely feel like a well paid cog in the
| machine, that probably explains why they ditch after 2 years.
| lph wrote:
| FAANG jobs stack rank you against people working 60+ hours a
| week who are desperate to keep their visas. You might not be
| technically required to work those long hours, but if you
| want to keep your job, you have to, unless you're an absolute
| rock star. It's not "work ethic" driving those long hours.
| It's fear.
|
| The hyper-capitalist notion that anyone who only wants to
| work 40 hours a week lacks work ethic is perverse. Jeff
| Bezos, for example, is proud of his Original Thought that
| there is "no such thing as work-life balance".
| it_citizen wrote:
| People desperate to keep their visa is not a FAANG specific
| problem. There are plenty of people coasting in unicorn
| companies and much more that just have a normal WLB. Some
| organizations might be the cut throats you are painting but
| don't generalize.
|
| Also, Amazon != all FAANG.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Once you have a few years under your belt then you can go
| after the big money and switch around every 12-18 months._ "
|
| Always switch jobs _before_ your project goes live and becomes
| legacy. (Legacy, at best. At worst, it goes live and fails
| embarrassingly. That 's bad, if you're still there.)
| ezoe wrote:
| How are they archive anything in 2 years? If the job is working
| on major free software, they may be able to start working from
| Day 1. But most works aren't that open even if they relies
| heavily on free software.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| "A job should be like a college course that you're getting paid
| for. You should have a notebook where you are logging everything
| you learn throughout the day. Every week or two weeks, you should
| review this notebook and how much you've written to it. When the
| new notes become sparse or stop altogether, it's time to start
| looking for another job (and a raise)."
|
| -- The message I would write to myself at the beginning of my
| career.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 10+ years at one company for me. Pay is peanuts.
| jedberg wrote:
| The reason Netflix has a high tenure is because they actually
| give substantial raises. Generally you don't have new people
| coming into the same role making more than people already there.
|
| They separate pay and performance. The assumption is that your
| performance is always at the top, or you wouldn't work there
| anymore. Pay is based on the most they think you can get when you
| leave. If they market is soaring, your pay will too.
|
| When I was there I once got a 25% raise because that was what we
| had to pay to get new people into similar roles.
| overgard wrote:
| I'm surprised more companies don't do that, it's very smart. I
| remember leaving one company I generally liked because we were
| getting 1-2% raises per year. It didn't even cover inflation.
| (And before you ask: no, not just me, I knew this because of
| other's complaining not myself.) Also this was a very large
| corporation known to be good to work for! Leaving for a similar
| job got me a 25k increase immediately, and I know for a fact it
| was expensive and time consuming for them to replace me. I just
| don't get why companies do this to themselves. Long term, the
| only people that end up sticking around are the people that
| either can't get other jobs because of lack of skill, or
| they're tied to a geographical region, or they have some sort
| of (sometimes misplaced) loyalty. I'm not saying money is
| everything, but taking less than market value for half a decade
| seems like a terrible career plan.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "the only people that end up sticking around are the people
| that either can't get other jobs because of lack of skill, or
| they're tied to a geographical region,"
|
| Can confirm, this is me - lack of skill and tied down.
|
| "but taking less than market value for half a decade seems
| like a terrible career plan."
|
| Been taking less than market value for over a decade.
| mcguire wrote:
| Never stay in a job that you love.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I absolutely hate it.
| mathattack wrote:
| I had a similar experience. It was 3% counting raises for
| promotions. They could somewhat get away with it in a low
| inflation environment. Then again they had layoffs to cut
| costs even more.
|
| Ironically they paid external consultants 3X the cost for
| skills they couldn't keep internally.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Unless your previous company went out of business I'm not
| sure they've made an incorrect decision. They're able to get
| the work they need done at a lower price.
|
| Sure they don't keep the highest performers but if they're
| not doing "rocket science" you don't need a rocket scientist.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| Usually the replacement is at market rate, ie. the amount
| OP got at the new place.
| bink wrote:
| And they lose the money they'll spend on recruiting and
| training, so it costs more in the long run.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'd love to see some numbers behind that.
|
| The article calls out nearly 15%/job when switching vs
| 3%/yr from staying. A 12% gap adds up fast.
| bink wrote:
| I'm comparing the costs of hiring a new employee versus
| offering a raise. The assumption is that most people will
| leave if they get an offer that includes a 15% raise
| rather than stay and only get 3%.
| lumost wrote:
| Companies with these policies often end up in an
| uncomfortable position that they start lowering
| expectations to market. Over time this problem becomes
| bigger as the company can't offer competitive wages
| anymore as the gap with existing employees is too large.
|
| A startup that started 1-2% band adjustments in 2016
| probably pays half the market rate for the same talent in
| 2022.
| overgard wrote:
| Well, in that case it was for a project that required a
| very specific and somewhat rare set of skills (IE, you
| couldn't just throw a dart and hit a web developer). I was
| friends with a lot of people there, so I know it took them
| about 6 months to find a replacement, and even then the
| person was more expensive and had a long ramp up time to
| become as productive.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's the big trick is most software companies aren't
| doing anything particularly novel or innovative that
| requires particularly skilled or inventive people. Where
| I work there's largely pocket of innovation where
| something new is brought into the company and then
| several other squads take that same process and apply it
| a few dozens times in a somewhat rote fashion.
| overgard wrote:
| Sure, but theres always ramp up time, domain knowledge,
| and the risk the new person is not as competent as they
| may have appeared in the interview, even if the skills
| are commodity
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think it's about most corporate hiring and comp practices
| being tuned to weak labor markets where workers don't have
| many options and there's not strong competition for workers.
| Doesn't work well in stretches when tech is red-hot, which
| tends to be at least half the time, over a long time-line, at
| least so far.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| They don't give raises because there are plenty of suckers
| that will happily accept the scraps they hand out.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep, that's me - a Grade A sucker.
| vkou wrote:
| > The assumption is that your performance is always at the top
|
| That's silly.
|
| At the top of what? Your current level? How do they determine
| which level you are at? They have levels, right, it's not a
| communist utopia where everyone, from the junior eng, to the
| SVP is equal.
|
| How is that different from any other firm which has eng levels,
| but relatively narrow wage bands within those levels?
|
| If you were to say that 'they always strive to pay top-of-
| market for <equivalent roles in other firms>', that would make
| more sense.
| solumos wrote:
| they don't hire junior engineers, and came up with the phrase
| "adequate performance will be given a generous severance"
|
| they have a "keeper test" that they use to determine who gets
| a severance package: basically, if your manager wouldn't
| fight for you to stay if you hypothetically told them you
| were leaving, you're at risk.
|
| they run the company like a professional sports team
|
| there are multiple books about their culture - it's quite
| different from the standard many-leveled hierarchy with
| strict wage bands
| jedberg wrote:
| Top of the industry. Netflix tries to hire the best in the
| industry and assumes that if you've been hired then you are
| that and will stay there.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > Becoming a role expert - 6 - 18 months - owning the role
| completely and helping to shape the direction of the team.
|
| This ... seems a bit extreme. I guess if you're doing something
| simple.
| angryasian wrote:
| Really ? That seems about average to me. A good leader should
| easily be able handle this reasonable within 6 months.
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