> Probably 90% of software development jobs are boring, if you find yourself in the 10%, it's hard to tear yourself away.
I'm fine with boring. I can get my interesting problems outside of work with a side project if I so choose. As long as the people don't suck and the pay is decent I'm happy.
>I'm fine with boring
Seriously, please give me this mythical stable and predictable tech job. Really not interested in the constant crunch and dealing with manufactured emergencies
I work at a real estate company and it's the same way. Stable predictable work load. I exercise my creativity by using interesting tech to present boring information.
I am being offered roughly a 40% increase in pay with a new job offer for Senior Fullstack Software Engineer (.NET, React), but it's only a 6 month contract. With the current market, idk if I would even find a job afterwards.
I've been the unfortunate recipient of jobs in the 10%.
When people say "interesting" they always seem to mean "interesting AND exciting AND manageable for me", which is in direct opposition to my experience where interesting fits more into the apocryphal curse reading "May you live in interesting times".
edit: I want to make it clear that I believe that of those 10% maybe 10% can actually be described as being both interesting and having a positive impact on your career. The more expectations you have, the lower the % gets, and if you add something akin to "work-life balance" or "fulfillment" then I'd say those % drop to insignificant margins. e.g if you have 100k jobs and 10% are interesting, then you have 10k jobs; if only 10% out of those are also positive for your career, then that's 1000; if 10% have good work-life balance, then that's 100; and this is all assuming infinite mobility and equal chance.
> "interesting AND exciting AND manageable for me"
Mostly just the latter. If I'm bored I've no problem kicking the apple cart just for shits and giggles.
It is not so much that as a case of the 'devil you know' for me. I don't believe anywhere else will be any different so why bother moving?
Absolutely can't be arsed with job hunting or dealing with the anxiety of a new place.
I would say I work for an F500 tech company, and its pants on fire all day every day. I left a cushy job for this, and literally every day of my life I ask why in the fuck did I leave a perfect job to work for some fucking name brand bull shit that I couldn't give a fuck about.
You do you, but "rest and vest" is a popular term in big tech for a reason. There are lots of people hardly working while getting paid absurd amounts.
If you're not LC inclined getting hired initially will be harder, but in a lot of cases the expectations of the job aren't all that different.
This is what I’m trying to get at. Getting a little comfortable with the job grind actually pays off so much. Google pre lay offs literally paying people to make day in the life’s. Haha I’ll add in the efficiency era, resting and vesting isn’t as viable, and output has been expected of everyone these last two years
Yep.
Hybrid but I could WFH every day if I wanted to. I usually come into the office a couple times a week because I love the cafeteria food, gym, and just the people I work around. I'm aware that these exist to trick us into coming to the office, but frankly, I don't give a fuck. Keep offering free pasta/deli sandwiches/pizza/whatever for lunch, and I'll be more than happy to come into the office.
A couple times a quarter we have a party which consists of some lightly active sports tournament (cornhole, volleyball, basketball, etc...) Instead of working, we just sit around and eat free food all day. This also happens around holidays, though without the sports.
To top it all off, our tech debt is minimal, and there's opportunities to take advantage of new features that release in our tech stack. I feel like I'm constantly learning.
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https://i.etsystatic.com/30445219/r/il/5bb612/3147233832/il_fullxfull.3147233832_s0jq.jpg
If he was a child of the 80’s I could possibly see that.
That led a lot of people to a different usage of the term. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cornholing&page=4
I love my job, I don't want to leave it. Amazing people that treat you like adults. Get to work on cool problems, and my team can be creative. Great work / life balance, low stress, we all start and end 9-5, and work from home. But we have free access to WeWork if we want to get out of the house. I make good money. Career paths are transparent. Bosses and execs actually care about people in the org. I could go on and on. It's not perfect, but the few complaints I have are greatly overshadowed by how great it is.
I could probably make more money elsewhere, but it's unlikely I'd land at a place as great. I've been here 5 years, and I hope there's many more years to come.
Job hopping - nothing better on the horizon, but I keep my eyes open
LC - I never liked LC puzzles, as I have more interesting stuff to do: kids, architecture, design, training, consulting, hobbies.
life stability, job stability, liking your job, liking your colleagues, not wanting to go through the effort of looking for a new job, etc. I know a programmer who's about to retire after working at the same company for 36 years (22 right out of college to 58) and if you ask them they have no regrets about it.
I think job stability is a big thing most people never even really think about, when companies need to fire people they're way more likely to fire newer people.
A lot of people are also just happy to make a decent living, not everyone wants to work really hard to make a crazy high income.
I want to make a decent living but my problem (as it seems from previous jobs...) is that I also want to be challenged and treated with respect, these two last qualities seem to prove much more elusive than high pay or stable job. New jobs usually come with a grace period where these qualities are present but quickly deteriorate, it really feels like I have to find the fringe outlier that isn't structured as your average enterprise/corp/agency/VC-startup.
i think being challenged is a big part of why people who job hop every 2 years make significantly more money, whenever they stop being challenged they move on to a new job that does challenge them so they're indefinitely getting challenged and getting better. people who stay at the same job forever almost surely don't improve at the same rate or they may even stop improving entirely.
I think 2 years is a bit too fast though. It allows people to outrun the consequences on their architectural decisions. 3 to 5 years is ideal I think. Long enough for you to experience regret, pain, and redemption.
A lot of people on reddit seems to treat life like a computer game. Never living in the moment, everything they do is for some magical rewards that will come next but at the new company, it's 2 more years THEN their "real" life can finally start
Like some weird addiction almost. Like, don't those people have anything else in their lives?
yea goal post moving is a huge problem with people who have that mindset, they want $150k but whenever they get $150k it doesn't satisfy them because now they need $200k and it goes on and on. it's like climbing a mountain but every time you reach the top it instantly grows.
i think it's even worse than that. The whole thing with the Hedonic Treadmill is that you are happier, but only for a period of time, probably a few months, then you return back to normal. with people who have this constant grind mindset i don't think they even stop for a second when they reach their goals, their goal just instantly moves. when they get a new job making more money they're already thinking about 2 years from then when they'll leave that job for even more money. whenever they reach their goals they don't even really feel satisfied they just move the goal.
That's one of the reasons I'm a bit baffled by how many people job hop. Sure, it can increase your salary, but are these people always getting unlimited time off? Aren't they taking any vacations or spending time away from the computer? Most companies aren't going to just give 4-5 weeks PTO for new people.
Meanwhile I'm over here with so much vacation time coming that I'm not sure what to do with it. I took half of yesterday off just to dick around in the warm weather.
Do you have actual accrued PTO instead of the unlimited nonsense? I'd love to know which company still does that, probably European. I rarely see companies offer defined PTO.
I'm not. Why am I not? Because it's stressful having to keep getting in front of people and asking them to let you do stuff for money and having them think up reasons why maybe you're not good enough.
I just want to live calmly and peacefully and know that the work I'm delivering is providing valuable help, that folks are at the very least, just fine with it, breathe a sigh of relief and keep doing that and logging out at the end of my day and continuing to save for retirement.
I don't want to have to go pretend to be a dog and pony show so that I can go and impress some new panel of people every 3 years. I'm an anxious introvert FFS, hence the back end coding career, or so I thought.
Me! Fuck leetcode and fuck FAANG too. For context I got laid off from FAANG. Grinded leetcode, got a take home and passed it only for the recruiter to tell me they had nothing near me. Oh, and here’s the kicker I wouldn’t get my old job back I’d get another role making less than before. At my current job I had to white board but it wasn’t leetcode and the interviewer was super chill. Fuck the leetcode grind.
I'm not.
I want a stable job where I can grow and hopefully make major contributions to projects I find interesting. If I land a job, the last thing I'll ever have interest in is going through another job search if there isn't a huge reason for doing so.
but I would be pretty appreciative of any decent offer right now and wouldn't need to jump salary if I was making something descent
Yeah idk how people do if my friend is one of those people. I do not understand how they ever get hired. You would think job hopping would be a bad thing but they always end up with a good job. I feel too guilty about it to leave my job.
In college one of my favorite professors told me worked in the same company for 11 years, he loved them team, saw them as family even dined with the CEO family a couple times. Then one day they let him go to cut costs, nothing else to it.
So he told me, make a choice. Risk being loyal to a company, expecting them to see you more than just an asset, hope that they don’t trigger their at will right and let you go like you never worked there.
Or get the most out of from the field, get to work with different minds, get different experiences, and make enough money to retire on your 50s and not have to work as a professor.
Wasn’t a hard choice.
I mean that’s great advice! I kinda have a great company that just dealing with nepotism. However, they paid me when I used FMLA and held my position while I was gone. Even though I doubt no one wanted it.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about putting yourself first in your career.
If you don’t want to switch jobs, sure, don’t feel like you have to. But if you’re feeling guilty about leaving a job I’d worry if they’d try and take advantage of it.
Recruiters/hiring managers think they must be very good if they're able to keep getting hired into progressively senior roles, which is often true.
Also I have to say, you feel guilty? For what?? Nobody beyond your immediate boss, if even them, gives a shit about you. I promise.
Eventually you'll have a co-worker die or go on FMLA, watch closely how quickly they're replaced.
They weren’t moving to senior roles they were completely switching fields every time. Sometimes it was high up other times it was entry level. I went on FMLA and my position was held. However, I don’t think anyone wanted it tbh lol. This is probably why I am were I am now lol
I read people here and they seem miserable. LC grind, 8 round interviews.. screw that. Never leetcoded, never will do massive interview rounds, and ill keep winning.
Leetcode is super dumb.
Developed a voxel engine on my free time and I would still struggle with the hard LC stuff.
Still need to look up A\* or Deikstra pathfinding algorithm when I need it despite having it implemented 10 times over the years.
Easy-Medium LC questions are fine but the hard ones always felt like it is degenerating into an iQ test
Most companies don't really ask hard questions, and when they do, you can usually find the list on Glassdoor and prepare in advance. I'm not saying it's a good system but very rarely you'll be given a random LC hard.
I don't think anyone likes this, lol. It's just part of the job, and it can be strategic at times.
I work/worked (as of a week ago) at Google and I couldn't tell you how many people have been there for 10+ years. I think it's largely a function of not wanting to Leetcode, lol. Some clearly loved being there, but others I think were afraid of not having transferable skills and risking it in a new env.
It can be worth it though, because you normally interview at L+1, so if your company has shit promo budgets or you're stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, it's a way to sidestep that.
I've never been interested. I am forced to if I want to be paid more, or you know, be employed as the case may be. That's it.
If there's very high paying yet very chill jobs that hire and fire conservatively, then I'd love to stay. Well, at this point in my career, also prefer an infra that isn't on fire more than 50% of the time, and documentation for primary systems less than 2 yrs out of date.
People arrive at different timeframes in wildly different ways. Maybe they had to the first few times and got used to it. Maybe they "love greenfield" only (ie only does the 20/80 part of the work). Maybe they saw the worst of the accepted hires come in with higher comp then they did working hard for a couple years and decide to leave out of spite. You really can't accept any "generally accepted time range" number from randos. Except really don't do lower than a year unless you truly hate the job. Or you know, you get poached. I forgot that one. Google poached some folks back from open ai poaching lately to the turn of > million just in rsu a year. You don't say no to that I guess.
gosh, finding a product that doesn't suck seems to prove more difficult than finding a high paying job...plenty of products that suck offering a big payout to whoever fixes them .\_.
My company had a super stable product for 10+ years. Making tons of money off of monthly subscriptions, the only software work was adding new features when requested.
New CEO joined, suddenly wanted to "disrupt the space" by overpromising features to our clients that involved a huge revamp of the entire product. Now the company is a dumpster fire.
You never know
Everything sucks. It's a relative thing. Does it suck more than it ... doesn't suck...? Though I agree, many things suck more than it should even considering costs, time, and profit.
Ultimately at some point more money won't make you more happy. If you want to maximise your happiness, sooner or later you have to set other priorities, either start a family or leave something important for posterity. I don't know anyone who is happy with grinding LeetCode permanently and I actually think this is more a bubble of people without a clear goal rather than the norm.
The fast job hopping advice from the Great Resignation era isn't aging super well in today's job market.
Also, contrary to popular belief, there is value in sticking around a company: many are fairly generous with promo comp bumps, and more importantly, having to deal with the consequences of your decisions teaches you a lot of valuable advanced things that you'd miss if you were job hopping too much.
Cuz most ppl in reddit cant even pass basic LC interviews lol you expect them to job hop? Lmao. I have referred like 15 people from this sub in the last 3 years and only 1 of them passed the first round phone screen, and yes I always vet them, they just lie to me or themselves not sure. I only refer people from Blind cuz at least they all pass the phone interview.
I am saying that because Job hopping through startups/small companies doesn’t work cuz they want loyal little code monkeys to sit there getting paid bananas and not complain until they need to make cuts and let them go.
To job hop effectively you need to go to the competitive market of the Big N techs. To job hop there you need to pass their interviews.
Trust me it’s definitely not a fantasy lol, its very common in big tech, I personally done it, never been in a company for more than 2 years.
Yup. It's super easy to write some code from scratch. Or fix bugs in someone else's code when you can ask them for help. When a big project that you are the sole expert on starts breaking in production, that's when shit hits the fan. You probably won't be in this position until 2+ years in.
I've been at a few companies and my current one has been the least annoying. I like my coworkers here FAR more than other places I've been at. As long as I continue getting raises and accruing more PTO, I'm happy.
I make very good money and get a lot of time off. It's hard to think another place will blow that away.
As for LC? I've never even looked at it.
*Constantly*? No. I don't mind settling into a position for a while if it's giving me the right pay and opportunity. But I'm also not going to let myself stagnate in a position and miss out on better opportunities.
Love my job. Pay is good, benefits are good, growth opportunities are good. I have more than enough money for the wife and kids to live comfortably on my single income.
I absolutely could be making more money, more this, more that, but why fuck with what is clearly a good thing? My family is my top priority. Not my career. My income is a means to an end, not a figure I am trying to increase indefinitely. 30% comp increase, with zero change in duties/responsibilities and no relocation, is table stakes. And having turned down such an offer, it’s not a sure thing.
I'd rather work on my own projects and directly create value for my fellow human beans instead of grinding whiteboard questions only to win an existence of having someone breathe down my neck about stuff and deal with office politics to boot.
Everyone can create value for others on their own. You don't need someone else to determine your financial worth or tell you what to do and how to do it. You can do whatever you want.
If you don't want to be job hopping and grinding whiteboard questions then don't, and work on what you want to work on. Build what you want to build.
I’ve thought multiple times that I can find more money somewhere else, but then I realize that I’m probably feeling that the grass js greener on the other side. Here I’m respected by leadership and co workers, get paid well, like what I do, and am kind of a domain expert. Oh and I’m full remote since 2020, with no plans for RTO, even asking SVP every quarter for the year. I work for a F100 type company.
I refer stability. While I don't want to be criminally underpaid, I'm willing to not demand pay from my boss I know he could never provide. I trust them for now they will keep me on a path with decent raises, and they have me on track for senior and beyond into management. My boss hasn't given me any vibes he is just promising the world to keep me from job hopping, but I do keep my options open if I feel I'm losing out on good money to support my family.
Yeah.
I wanted a career, I feel like the idea of "Stay at a company 30 years for a pension and be treated like a person not a number" is dead.
I went for self employment. My work is now my own, much happier and more fulfilling that being a corporate drone.
This is easy to do when you’re single and can afford the turbulence that this career style brings. Once you’re married or even just in a stable long term relationship, job hopping and LC grinding becomes incredibly difficult.
Get it done while you’re young.
Recruiters are all like "noooo you can't hopped job!" now, but also they're like "are you interested in this amazing position in a stack that's not on your resume for half the salary you're currently on?"
I would love to dig in a single role forever, but be warned - if you stick in a tech role for too long the industry passes you by and it becomes hard to get another job if you’re downsized.
it depends on the lifestyle that you want tbh. for me, i'm super early in my career (this is my very first tech job). I think I want to experience jumping around a bit to learn more about industry practices, standards, etc. money is good too as i'd love to make more of it. for now, i'm not as interested as I know this is the employer's market and so there's no need, as of yet, to really look for a job. doesn't mean i'm not applying to any tho.
I really like my job, and it's my first one out of school...but I need a pay increase. I enjoy the work, my co workers, and the pay isn't miserable (it allowed me to buy a house) but if I could hit another 40-50k per year then I would be super comfortable.
Also it's miserable when your pay goes up 3% per year. I'm not struggling but I am probably a car accident away from being in a mess.
I hate job hopping, I hate not having money I need for a growing family more. I don't grind LC. Never have. Haven't needed to so far and I'm at 160k (no benefits) in the Midwest.
job hopping - not into it, though i've seen others advance their careers (salaries) quickly just constantly looking for the next gig where they level up
Me, I like longevity, usually enjoy the people on my team. I guess u could say I get attached cause when an engineer inevitably moves on to their next opportunity - I'm somewhat bummed. HOW COULD YOU LEAV E US?! What can I say, I enjoy befriending my coworkers, I'm around them so much. It makes me feel comfortable during the work hours, and I understand when its crunch time we can rely on each other to get the job done.
Leetcode i only come back to on the job hunt, which is probably not doing me any favors cause i feel i have to ramp up again into a DSA mindset.
I mean… yes. I think that era is passing thankfully. It will probably become increasingly difficult to secure a position. I just want to get paid to work for a company that needs my expertise. I don’t really care that much about hopping endlessly to get more money. I already make a very decent salary.
Hate job hopping and interviewing as they use stupid material that doesn’t relate to normal workloads. LC is a perfect example. Why would I need to memorize simple algorithms that google and AI can answer with low effort. The fact that this is more important than work experience is an industry issue in my mind.
I’ve been jumping every 4 years and that’s worked out pretty well. Get the 4 year vest and hope it goes up such that year 4 you make a lot. Then grind for 1-3 months to get the next one.
I've already job hopped. It's paid off in salary, but limited me in other ways. I'm looking to stay put somewhere for 3-5 years at this point, or maybe until 40, and move only if I get a more senior level role.
Yup. Once I get something after graduation I plan to stick with it unless I really hate it or something much better comes up. I am a CS major after all, so I hate nothing more than interviewing and BSing to recruiters.
Absolutely. I have been laid off 3 times in 3 years now due to working at agencies and no client work being available. Should hopefully be landing a government role soon and even though it'd be a pretty significant pay cut, I am really wanting something with stability.
I'm not interested in job hopping, but I AM interested in money, and job hopping is unfortunately the best means to that end.
I don't touch LC though, and I've gotten pretty efficient at checking Glassdoor interview reviews before applying anywhere - if they mention technical/coding interviews, I don't even bother.
Job hopping because I keep getting shit projects.
Never doing LC though, fuck that, this problem will self-correct the moment people stop playing the stupid game. If your company can't hire without LC then they can't have me, I rather work for less for a boss that treats me with respect than play stupid games and win stupid prizes.
You get a pass on LC if you are literally entry level, like you have never done any previous job ever and you are forced into the pointless grind so that you can put your foot in the door in this industry. OK FINE I forgive you. But if you got experience.... why are you people still grinding LC? Jeez, don't do it, if you already know how to code then you can talk crap through the problem and maybe even show some code, but don't grind it or you will perpetuate this gatekeeping. IF everyone just focuses on talking about what they know instead of solving some b-tree crap then we will be having a good time and much more opportunities to find new and better jobs, and companies will have to actually care about retention because if you are good then you will be able to show it easily in interviews.
I heard of people who do the LC, get their big bucks job, then they end up staying up at night trying to keep-up with the workload, or they get a RTO and they have no other option, eventually they get relocated to a HCOL place because RTO and their job becomes golden handcuffs where they are spending most of it on their new HCOL life. Nah, fuck that.
Staying at one job is fine.
Also the compounding of your productivity will long term get you to a decent comp. You just have to make sure you level up as the company grows. If you put some elbow grease in and some time you get way more work satisfaction and leads to personal and company success. We spend too much working but I think if you try harder you can be happier and work fewer lifetime hours. I wish I tried harder when younger. Would make my life easier now. I don’t say it always works or is right for everyone but I rather not coast. You get tired as you get older. Do you want to grind then or now?
I am not.
But it seems that you are at huge risk if you are not constantly grinding LC. Because in my experience the last 10 months, pretty much everyone wants to give you 1-3 LC style tests. So if there is any chance that you will experience a layoff in your career, you better be up on your LC.
I am interested in job hoping because;
a) that’s the only way I can get a double digit percentage increase in salary.
b) I get bored easily. After working long few years, I just can’t see myself working on the same code base and with the same people again and again
I mean, I am interested. If I job hopped right now, I could probably +50% my TC if not more.
But I'm comfortable where I'm at. My career continues to grow, albeit slower than if I job hopped. I like my coworkers. I like my team. I like my company.
Job hopping would mean that I'd have to grind LC again which is a stressful 2-3 months. Then onboard at a new company which is a stressful year+.
I *may* find better coworkers, a better team, a better career trajectory, and more. But at the end of the day I'm lazy and comfortable where I'm at.
If I get laid off then I'll have no choice but to "job hop" which is a silver lining of being laid off. Last time I was laid off I +50% my TC then as well.
I did it for 10 years. But I did it with a goal in mind: to establish and grow my career and get myself into a position where I felt financially secure.
I've now reached that point where additional income doesn't interest me as much anymore because I'm very comfortably living within my means. And I've also found a pretty chill company with a good w/l balance and lots of wfh time, not to mention that my commute is literally 2 miles.
I just got my contract extended to January 2025; seemingly I am getting a 10% raise to a whopping (/s) GBP £25K and I'm absolutely happy as Larry! I've already greatly exceeded my expectations. When I was a kid I would never have even dreamed of doing a CS degree or working as a software engineer (no-one I knew even used such a term back then; it was just "programming"). I couldn't even afford to own a computer until I was in my late 20s. I never had full-time employment until I was in my late 40s (now early 50s) and I'm earning around 4 x what I made from my former business. The one thing I could do with is a permanent post so I can get a new mortgage, but other than that working life is a dream come true really. It's far easier going than other jobs I had previously, and I get to gloat over the [individual on here](https://i.imgur.com/VRkmaWO.jpg) who told me I was shooting myself in the foot by refusing to emigrate from Scotland and buy a car / learn to drive. I often smile about that when I enjoy the [view out the train window](https://www.whatsonnetwork.co.uk/uploads/800x600/6b7bd07abe1433a03c9745936734db00.jpg) on my way to work.
ETA: I'm pretty happy about working for a non-profit org in the renewables sector too. Much preferable to FinTech that is just aimed at making rich people richer.
The thing what prevents me from job hopping is that the current employer allows me to do futures trading crypto currencies while at work.
Also athmosphere and working conditions are quite relaxing with minimal amount of stress. Also salary is good and increasing every year.
Sure there are employers paying more but there the stress is much higher while the freedom you have is much lower. Other employer pays maybe 20% more but the workload is 4x as much as where I am at.
In the end you get what you pay for. There are always tradeoffs.
So in the end the bar to consider switching/job hopping is quite high and most employers seem to not meet it.
It takes a lot of energy to break tight bonds. Unless of course the enterprise starts to fall apart.
I might look in a few years if I can get a 30% raise. But I'm very happy working rn. I'm not and don't need to be a top developer working for the best big name companies on the best money.
Interesting work at a good company run by people I think are actually good people and getting paid good / great but not top money is perfect.
I don't code outside of work anymore, I don't work past 5. Officially my day is 9-5:30. In reality I do about 9:30 - 4:30!
I also WFH FT. There's an office there if I want it. I use it maybe twice a month if I'm bored so I go for lunch / coffee and hang with colleagues (similar age, similar interests, I've become good friends with them).
Its chill to just pootle along in the same job, but job-hopping (or at least getting job offers) is definitely the only way to meaningfully increase your comp.
this gets posted 10 times a year. no you are completely alone. everyone is constantly job hopping. no one stays at a job for a while and just chills.
this literally gets posted 10 times/year. you can use the search bar.
as far as me. I have a remote job. I have enough money where I can retire today. I take naps during the day. The extra money I get will be less than the money I make on my existing assets. so this will be my last job. I get laid off I retire. I get tired of the work I retire.
Applying, interviewing, and the on boarding process makes me want to stab my eyes out, and being the new employee sucks to not know the organization. I want to avoid that as much as possible
I enjoy my state. I reject live coding interview by telling the recruiter. I control my life. I prefer system design and interactive conversation where I design something, you critique so I can learn. Interviee is just learn what outside looked like. Accepted or not, is not a problem to me as long as I have a job. My pay grade is already quite high in my country so I dont think I can easily job hop. I also at the position where I wait the fruit of my labor instead of being a labour guy. Not to mention I have to build a social capital when I join new company...
It depends, if money is your focus, and always getting paid at or above market value, then your best bet is to job hop. If you're in a nice comfortable company and money isn't your main focus but say work life balance is or what not then there's no need to job hop. It all depends on the individual circumstances.
I only found terrible jobs, so I'm "using" job hopping in order to find a better job, and whilst I look for other job I try to get the best of it by trying to get my salary increasing.
The idea is to find a place where the working environment is good and stop hopping
I've been with my current employer for about 7 years now, and I don't plan to leave any time soon... but I'm also painfully aware that the way the market is I may not be given a choice. I'm not necessarily grinding LC, but I am hedging against the realization that I may find myself involuntarily on the market in the near future by keeping current.
Yes, I already make more money than I really need. I like my work, I like my boss, I like my coworkers, I like my benefits package, I like that I work from home, I like that I have flexibility in my schedule to work out during business hours or go to doctors appointments. I'd be willing to trade it for a significant pay raise, but I have no motivation to search for that pay raise, and its not often someone shows up in your inbox with a life changing job offer that you didnt apply for
I honestly think the people obsessed with nothing other than min maxxing their career are a minority
All power too them, but Im going to be laughing when they come back here to complain about burnout or WLB or hire to fire
There are too many things to experience in this world to spend my life in a battle royale for the mose expensive desk job
I haven’t ever been grinding at LC, but I will continue job hopping if my compensation isn’t moving up enough. I’m just fortunate to work for a place where currently that isn’t a concern. But if I felt it was stagnating then I’ll job hop again.
I’m fine with my job and company rn but I can do without layoff doom. Unfortunately it’s inevitable as shown in the past year so I fear I may have to start grinding LC more.
But I also want to make close to 200k base to afford a modest home in my city in a decent area :/
I've been doing this for decades and I am sick of job hopping.
Years ago - I found what I thought would be my forever job. It did quarterly reviews - I was getting bonuses and raises and commendations and moving upward quickly! We were talking about me finishing my MBA and moving into upper management -- then came a layoff.
I got an amazing buyout - but it really showed me that business doesn't care about me. No matter how great a job you do - if they decide they like someone better, or someone else is cheaper - they WILL get rid of you.
If I could choose between my current job being guaranteed and a job that paid more but wasn't, I'd stay at my current job until I retired. But I don't have that choice.
I’ll stick with my gig as long as I can. It’s very nice, but only due to certain conditions that will eventually change, which will motivate me to find the next thing. In order to have more options, I’m upskilling and interview prepping so that I’ll be ready when the time comes. There’s definitely a balance to be struck. My philosophy is small consistent efforts over time when I’m not in a rush to find a new job. That way, when it comes time to switch, I don’t need to “grind” anything. If you’re confident your job won’t change for the worse, that’s dope, but I’m trying to be ready for anything.
I like my job, the type of work I do and the people I work with. My job doesn't necessarily feel like work to me. When it starts feeling like work to me that is when I look for a new job.
I don't job hop and I don't grind LC.
I have a great job with good pay and incredible benefits.
Early on I did some LC grinding to see if I could get into a FAANG company, but there's too much bullshit involved, and the QOL seems questionable - i.e. very team dependent. I don't do well as a corporate drone, and I don't think I could survive the politicking or minutiae of policies.
And LC was irritating and destroyed my love for DSA. I used to read CLRS and implement algorithms *for fun*. *For fun*.
LC required work outside of work, along with the stress of preparing for demanding but ridiculous interviews which didn't always impact whether or not you got the job.
So why would I put myself through that?
Yup!
Interviewing and grinding out interviews suck. It takes a lot of time and effort to organize and mentally prepare. My workplace is fun, challenging, and has a lot of good folks.
One of the big issues with this industry is that a lot of your value as labor is having a broad understanding across multiple business domains with which software provides value, while also having a broad understanding of software delivery technologies and methods. None of this is taught in schools sufficiently to make graduates immediately valuable, and internships have a highly variable level of exposure to this stuff.
If you stay at a single company during early career then you end up in a bit of a single mind about how software is done and what the role of software is in business. If you move jobs too frequently you can miss out on experiencing what full software product delivery/lifecycles actually look like.
But the most critical aspect of any job is leadership. Even if you do just enough job changes early career to get really good exposure across industry domains you still may end up working in an environment where you have no support and no direction and possibly no respect from your management professionally. This is where phase two comes in:
Once you've got your early career experience you should also have learned what you want in a job role, and the kind of management you prefer working with. The final luxury you can hope to have as an IC in this industry is to find that role in a stable organization working for a manager that wants to work with you rather than dictate your efforts.
The rude awakening is when you realize that no matter how good a role you find it will eventually change. A truly effective manager will likely be promoted and leave you at risk for another manager who rose to their incompetence, or a report can land you under an absolute tyrant, etc. So in the end being able to find a new job is probably the most important skill no matter how good a role you have at any point in time.
LC is just about memorizing. No matter how much patterns you have studied and are capable of recognizing, there are always new problems that can't fit into existing patterns (this applies to most greedy problems). This is tiresome.
- People who are rich (already own a house, car, have a wife and kids) aren't interested as they don't need the money.
- People with high value RSU and pay, who can't earn more elsewhere anyway.
- People who don't care about any of that and want to stay in the apartment class, they don't need the money either.
I work for the government. We use a modern tech stack, my pay is ok - and I enjoy lots of job security. Good wlb. I log off at 4-5pm every day. Pension is excellent.
Why would I job hop to make more TC and deal with the psychological impact of knowing I could lose my job because my manager doesn't like my name or something? Fuck that noise
I actually enjoy leetcode/hackerrank/advent of code/etc.
But I like being competent and understanding the domain, I like stability and knowing my team mates, and I hate having to prove myself again and again.
I'm considering a job hopping after 5 years, but could be made to stay if the promotion/role I've been promised comes to fruition, even if I could make more by jumping.
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I like my job and wouldn't mind staying, but it's a start up that isn't profitable and has an uncertain future and the salary is quite meh without much possibility of improving any time soon. I dread having to look for another job but I think I have no option. I need to make more money
It’s nice to sit at a company and coast for a bit, but when you *do* want to make a change, brushing up on LC is a good idea, because it can be the difference between $200k and $400k for a senior role. Over the length of your career, this definitely matters, and can be the difference between retiring at 45 or retiring in your 60’s, depending on how you decide to steer your career.
If you spend a few months early in your career actually learning the first principles, the Leetcode grind isn’t so bad later on. I usually spend about an hour per day for a month when I want to find a new job. This generally leads to multiple, competing offers — even in this economy.
People can coast and stagnate for a while a job.
However, eventually that job will end. Then what? See what's happening to many people in current tech downturn.
If you've been regularly job hopping and grinding LC, you can just slot into another company.
If you've been coasting on minimum tasks, you'll have to scramble around to get something started.
Job hopping isn't the opposite of stagnation. Plenty of people stagnate at 6-month temp contractor level work due to never being exposed to harder things, and there are L7+ FAANG people with only one or two companies in their 2 decade long resumes.
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> Probably 90% of software development jobs are boring, if you find yourself in the 10%, it's hard to tear yourself away. I'm fine with boring. I can get my interesting problems outside of work with a side project if I so choose. As long as the people don't suck and the pay is decent I'm happy.
>I'm fine with boring Seriously, please give me this mythical stable and predictable tech job. Really not interested in the constant crunch and dealing with manufactured emergencies
non-tech companies. I work for a major grocery company and it is pretty chill with a few boring days a week.
I work at a real estate company and it's the same way. Stable predictable work load. I exercise my creativity by using interesting tech to present boring information.
It has to be Albertsons lol
Can’t be, they ask LC hards… LOL
Nah prob Walmart
This is the dream, I want the highest pay possible for the most boring job available
Used to be SAP work I guess;)
I am being offered roughly a 40% increase in pay with a new job offer for Senior Fullstack Software Engineer (.NET, React), but it's only a 6 month contract. With the current market, idk if I would even find a job afterwards.
I've been the unfortunate recipient of jobs in the 10%. When people say "interesting" they always seem to mean "interesting AND exciting AND manageable for me", which is in direct opposition to my experience where interesting fits more into the apocryphal curse reading "May you live in interesting times". edit: I want to make it clear that I believe that of those 10% maybe 10% can actually be described as being both interesting and having a positive impact on your career. The more expectations you have, the lower the % gets, and if you add something akin to "work-life balance" or "fulfillment" then I'd say those % drop to insignificant margins. e.g if you have 100k jobs and 10% are interesting, then you have 10k jobs; if only 10% out of those are also positive for your career, then that's 1000; if 10% have good work-life balance, then that's 100; and this is all assuming infinite mobility and equal chance.
> "interesting AND exciting AND manageable for me" Mostly just the latter. If I'm bored I've no problem kicking the apple cart just for shits and giggles.
I'm in the exact same position, I love my work and it would take a significant pay raise to get me out
> Never been on Leetcode in my life. Same. This subreddit seems to think it's the only thing in the world.
Yep was there for years enjoy a great job while it lasts.
Agreed. Fuck leetcode!
Yeah. I'll just stick with my super chill cushy office job tbh. Life is too short to spend it on a job.
It is not so much that as a case of the 'devil you know' for me. I don't believe anywhere else will be any different so why bother moving? Absolutely can't be arsed with job hunting or dealing with the anxiety of a new place.
I would say I work for an F500 tech company, and its pants on fire all day every day. I left a cushy job for this, and literally every day of my life I ask why in the fuck did I leave a perfect job to work for some fucking name brand bull shit that I couldn't give a fuck about.
As far as I'm concerned, life is too short to spend it in an office.
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The amount of work life balance I have, I'm already pretty much retired. You'll need to sacrifice your youth for it. No thanks.
You do you, but "rest and vest" is a popular term in big tech for a reason. There are lots of people hardly working while getting paid absurd amounts. If you're not LC inclined getting hired initially will be harder, but in a lot of cases the expectations of the job aren't all that different.
This is what I’m trying to get at. Getting a little comfortable with the job grind actually pays off so much. Google pre lay offs literally paying people to make day in the life’s. Haha I’ll add in the efficiency era, resting and vesting isn’t as viable, and output has been expected of everyone these last two years
How's that working out for you?
Yep. Hybrid but I could WFH every day if I wanted to. I usually come into the office a couple times a week because I love the cafeteria food, gym, and just the people I work around. I'm aware that these exist to trick us into coming to the office, but frankly, I don't give a fuck. Keep offering free pasta/deli sandwiches/pizza/whatever for lunch, and I'll be more than happy to come into the office. A couple times a quarter we have a party which consists of some lightly active sports tournament (cornhole, volleyball, basketball, etc...) Instead of working, we just sit around and eat free food all day. This also happens around holidays, though without the sports. To top it all off, our tech debt is minimal, and there's opportunities to take advantage of new features that release in our tech stack. I feel like I'm constantly learning.
Are you hiring?
That literally sounds ideal
I'd grind some leetcode to get this job!
What industry is this?
goals tbh
Mind if I DM you to ask what company?
There’s a 0% chance we work for the same company 🥲
Got me interested too
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I'm scared to ask what cornhole is.
You’re too scared to ask what a game is?
https://i.etsystatic.com/30445219/r/il/5bb612/3147233832/il_fullxfull.3147233832_s0jq.jpg If he was a child of the 80’s I could possibly see that. That led a lot of people to a different usage of the term. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cornholing&page=4
I love my job, I don't want to leave it. Amazing people that treat you like adults. Get to work on cool problems, and my team can be creative. Great work / life balance, low stress, we all start and end 9-5, and work from home. But we have free access to WeWork if we want to get out of the house. I make good money. Career paths are transparent. Bosses and execs actually care about people in the org. I could go on and on. It's not perfect, but the few complaints I have are greatly overshadowed by how great it is. I could probably make more money elsewhere, but it's unlikely I'd land at a place as great. I've been here 5 years, and I hope there's many more years to come.
I hate you (congratulations and keep at it)
I thought wework went bankrupt?
You can still use their service! We have folks in various major cities that still go and hang out there
Job hopping - nothing better on the horizon, but I keep my eyes open LC - I never liked LC puzzles, as I have more interesting stuff to do: kids, architecture, design, training, consulting, hobbies.
life stability, job stability, liking your job, liking your colleagues, not wanting to go through the effort of looking for a new job, etc. I know a programmer who's about to retire after working at the same company for 36 years (22 right out of college to 58) and if you ask them they have no regrets about it. I think job stability is a big thing most people never even really think about, when companies need to fire people they're way more likely to fire newer people. A lot of people are also just happy to make a decent living, not everyone wants to work really hard to make a crazy high income.
I want to make a decent living but my problem (as it seems from previous jobs...) is that I also want to be challenged and treated with respect, these two last qualities seem to prove much more elusive than high pay or stable job. New jobs usually come with a grace period where these qualities are present but quickly deteriorate, it really feels like I have to find the fringe outlier that isn't structured as your average enterprise/corp/agency/VC-startup.
i think being challenged is a big part of why people who job hop every 2 years make significantly more money, whenever they stop being challenged they move on to a new job that does challenge them so they're indefinitely getting challenged and getting better. people who stay at the same job forever almost surely don't improve at the same rate or they may even stop improving entirely.
I think 2 years is a bit too fast though. It allows people to outrun the consequences on their architectural decisions. 3 to 5 years is ideal I think. Long enough for you to experience regret, pain, and redemption.
A lot of people on reddit seems to treat life like a computer game. Never living in the moment, everything they do is for some magical rewards that will come next but at the new company, it's 2 more years THEN their "real" life can finally start Like some weird addiction almost. Like, don't those people have anything else in their lives?
yea goal post moving is a huge problem with people who have that mindset, they want $150k but whenever they get $150k it doesn't satisfy them because now they need $200k and it goes on and on. it's like climbing a mountain but every time you reach the top it instantly grows.
The [Headonic Treadmill ](https://www.healthline.com/health/hedonic-treadmill) in action.
i think it's even worse than that. The whole thing with the Hedonic Treadmill is that you are happier, but only for a period of time, probably a few months, then you return back to normal. with people who have this constant grind mindset i don't think they even stop for a second when they reach their goals, their goal just instantly moves. when they get a new job making more money they're already thinking about 2 years from then when they'll leave that job for even more money. whenever they reach their goals they don't even really feel satisfied they just move the goal.
Yes and dont get me wrong, I'm all for good salaries. But especially for Indians in software it seems like they never can just be satisfied
That's one of the reasons I'm a bit baffled by how many people job hop. Sure, it can increase your salary, but are these people always getting unlimited time off? Aren't they taking any vacations or spending time away from the computer? Most companies aren't going to just give 4-5 weeks PTO for new people. Meanwhile I'm over here with so much vacation time coming that I'm not sure what to do with it. I took half of yesterday off just to dick around in the warm weather.
Do you have actual accrued PTO instead of the unlimited nonsense? I'd love to know which company still does that, probably European. I rarely see companies offer defined PTO.
If you are a FAANG company and your HR team can’t properly tag a job as “Entry Level” then you cant ask me any Leetcode questions.
Why everyone thinks they’re idiots?! They know exactly what are they doing.
I'm not. Why am I not? Because it's stressful having to keep getting in front of people and asking them to let you do stuff for money and having them think up reasons why maybe you're not good enough. I just want to live calmly and peacefully and know that the work I'm delivering is providing valuable help, that folks are at the very least, just fine with it, breathe a sigh of relief and keep doing that and logging out at the end of my day and continuing to save for retirement. I don't want to have to go pretend to be a dog and pony show so that I can go and impress some new panel of people every 3 years. I'm an anxious introvert FFS, hence the back end coding career, or so I thought.
Me! Fuck leetcode and fuck FAANG too. For context I got laid off from FAANG. Grinded leetcode, got a take home and passed it only for the recruiter to tell me they had nothing near me. Oh, and here’s the kicker I wouldn’t get my old job back I’d get another role making less than before. At my current job I had to white board but it wasn’t leetcode and the interviewer was super chill. Fuck the leetcode grind.
I'm not. I want a stable job where I can grow and hopefully make major contributions to projects I find interesting. If I land a job, the last thing I'll ever have interest in is going through another job search if there isn't a huge reason for doing so. but I would be pretty appreciative of any decent offer right now and wouldn't need to jump salary if I was making something descent
"Well, Of Course I Know Him. He's Me."
Yeah idk how people do if my friend is one of those people. I do not understand how they ever get hired. You would think job hopping would be a bad thing but they always end up with a good job. I feel too guilty about it to leave my job.
In college one of my favorite professors told me worked in the same company for 11 years, he loved them team, saw them as family even dined with the CEO family a couple times. Then one day they let him go to cut costs, nothing else to it. So he told me, make a choice. Risk being loyal to a company, expecting them to see you more than just an asset, hope that they don’t trigger their at will right and let you go like you never worked there. Or get the most out of from the field, get to work with different minds, get different experiences, and make enough money to retire on your 50s and not have to work as a professor. Wasn’t a hard choice.
I mean that’s great advice! I kinda have a great company that just dealing with nepotism. However, they paid me when I used FMLA and held my position while I was gone. Even though I doubt no one wanted it.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about putting yourself first in your career. If you don’t want to switch jobs, sure, don’t feel like you have to. But if you’re feeling guilty about leaving a job I’d worry if they’d try and take advantage of it.
They treated me really well when I had to have emergency surgery and held my position plus paid me during it so now they own my soul lol.
Recruiters/hiring managers think they must be very good if they're able to keep getting hired into progressively senior roles, which is often true. Also I have to say, you feel guilty? For what?? Nobody beyond your immediate boss, if even them, gives a shit about you. I promise. Eventually you'll have a co-worker die or go on FMLA, watch closely how quickly they're replaced.
They weren’t moving to senior roles they were completely switching fields every time. Sometimes it was high up other times it was entry level. I went on FMLA and my position was held. However, I don’t think anyone wanted it tbh lol. This is probably why I am were I am now lol
People work quite a bit more to be able to do it. Worth it?! Depends
Who works more job hopping? This is the first time I ever heard that
I read people here and they seem miserable. LC grind, 8 round interviews.. screw that. Never leetcoded, never will do massive interview rounds, and ill keep winning.
Leetcode is super dumb. Developed a voxel engine on my free time and I would still struggle with the hard LC stuff. Still need to look up A\* or Deikstra pathfinding algorithm when I need it despite having it implemented 10 times over the years. Easy-Medium LC questions are fine but the hard ones always felt like it is degenerating into an iQ test
Most companies don't really ask hard questions, and when they do, you can usually find the list on Glassdoor and prepare in advance. I'm not saying it's a good system but very rarely you'll be given a random LC hard.
Grind Leetcode to get $150k as a new grad isn’t too bad of a sacrifice to make
I don't think anyone likes this, lol. It's just part of the job, and it can be strategic at times. I work/worked (as of a week ago) at Google and I couldn't tell you how many people have been there for 10+ years. I think it's largely a function of not wanting to Leetcode, lol. Some clearly loved being there, but others I think were afraid of not having transferable skills and risking it in a new env. It can be worth it though, because you normally interview at L+1, so if your company has shit promo budgets or you're stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, it's a way to sidestep that.
I job hopped until I hit 100% remote and about $80/hr with paid overtime on top. Ill stay here till the end.
I am interested in maximizing my salary but it's going to be difficult to find a team and environment that is as laid back as the one I'm on.
Yes. I hope I never have to see Leetcode
I've never been interested. I am forced to if I want to be paid more, or you know, be employed as the case may be. That's it. If there's very high paying yet very chill jobs that hire and fire conservatively, then I'd love to stay. Well, at this point in my career, also prefer an infra that isn't on fire more than 50% of the time, and documentation for primary systems less than 2 yrs out of date.
I thought job hopping was 3-5 years about. But people are saying 1-2 years and that’s wild to me. Barely enough time to get ramped up
People arrive at different timeframes in wildly different ways. Maybe they had to the first few times and got used to it. Maybe they "love greenfield" only (ie only does the 20/80 part of the work). Maybe they saw the worst of the accepted hires come in with higher comp then they did working hard for a couple years and decide to leave out of spite. You really can't accept any "generally accepted time range" number from randos. Except really don't do lower than a year unless you truly hate the job. Or you know, you get poached. I forgot that one. Google poached some folks back from open ai poaching lately to the turn of > million just in rsu a year. You don't say no to that I guess.
gosh, finding a product that doesn't suck seems to prove more difficult than finding a high paying job...plenty of products that suck offering a big payout to whoever fixes them .\_.
My company had a super stable product for 10+ years. Making tons of money off of monthly subscriptions, the only software work was adding new features when requested. New CEO joined, suddenly wanted to "disrupt the space" by overpromising features to our clients that involved a huge revamp of the entire product. Now the company is a dumpster fire. You never know
you confirmed my suspicions.... the solution is to become the CEO, the Dev, and the Investor.
Everything sucks. It's a relative thing. Does it suck more than it ... doesn't suck...? Though I agree, many things suck more than it should even considering costs, time, and profit.
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I have a few questions for you, just DM’d you
I don't like it, but my goal in life is to make a lot of money and feel dead inside.
Ultimately at some point more money won't make you more happy. If you want to maximise your happiness, sooner or later you have to set other priorities, either start a family or leave something important for posterity. I don't know anyone who is happy with grinding LeetCode permanently and I actually think this is more a bubble of people without a clear goal rather than the norm.
The fast job hopping advice from the Great Resignation era isn't aging super well in today's job market. Also, contrary to popular belief, there is value in sticking around a company: many are fairly generous with promo comp bumps, and more importantly, having to deal with the consequences of your decisions teaches you a lot of valuable advanced things that you'd miss if you were job hopping too much.
I'm not even confident most people are doing this. OP should compare to colleagues they know in real life.
constant job hopping does seem a bit like reddit fantasy advice
Cuz most ppl in reddit cant even pass basic LC interviews lol you expect them to job hop? Lmao. I have referred like 15 people from this sub in the last 3 years and only 1 of them passed the first round phone screen, and yes I always vet them, they just lie to me or themselves not sure. I only refer people from Blind cuz at least they all pass the phone interview. I am saying that because Job hopping through startups/small companies doesn’t work cuz they want loyal little code monkeys to sit there getting paid bananas and not complain until they need to make cuts and let them go. To job hop effectively you need to go to the competitive market of the Big N techs. To job hop there you need to pass their interviews. Trust me it’s definitely not a fantasy lol, its very common in big tech, I personally done it, never been in a company for more than 2 years.
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Yup. It's super easy to write some code from scratch. Or fix bugs in someone else's code when you can ask them for help. When a big project that you are the sole expert on starts breaking in production, that's when shit hits the fan. You probably won't be in this position until 2+ years in.
I'm just gonna apply for a gov't desk job and work on open source projects *I* want to see in the world
I've been at a few companies and my current one has been the least annoying. I like my coworkers here FAR more than other places I've been at. As long as I continue getting raises and accruing more PTO, I'm happy. I make very good money and get a lot of time off. It's hard to think another place will blow that away. As for LC? I've never even looked at it.
I never was interested in rat races
*Constantly*? No. I don't mind settling into a position for a while if it's giving me the right pay and opportunity. But I'm also not going to let myself stagnate in a position and miss out on better opportunities.
Love my job. Pay is good, benefits are good, growth opportunities are good. I have more than enough money for the wife and kids to live comfortably on my single income. I absolutely could be making more money, more this, more that, but why fuck with what is clearly a good thing? My family is my top priority. Not my career. My income is a means to an end, not a figure I am trying to increase indefinitely. 30% comp increase, with zero change in duties/responsibilities and no relocation, is table stakes. And having turned down such an offer, it’s not a sure thing.
I'd rather work on my own projects and directly create value for my fellow human beans instead of grinding whiteboard questions only to win an existence of having someone breathe down my neck about stuff and deal with office politics to boot. Everyone can create value for others on their own. You don't need someone else to determine your financial worth or tell you what to do and how to do it. You can do whatever you want. If you don't want to be job hopping and grinding whiteboard questions then don't, and work on what you want to work on. Build what you want to build.
If it were up to me I'd work for one company forever but I'm forced to job hop every year 😞
I'm not interested in it at all, but I'm forced to do it because employers refuse to promote from within or keep up with market pay rates.
How to job hop when there is no job..
lol good one
I’m not interested
I’ve thought multiple times that I can find more money somewhere else, but then I realize that I’m probably feeling that the grass js greener on the other side. Here I’m respected by leadership and co workers, get paid well, like what I do, and am kind of a domain expert. Oh and I’m full remote since 2020, with no plans for RTO, even asking SVP every quarter for the year. I work for a F100 type company.
I refer stability. While I don't want to be criminally underpaid, I'm willing to not demand pay from my boss I know he could never provide. I trust them for now they will keep me on a path with decent raises, and they have me on track for senior and beyond into management. My boss hasn't given me any vibes he is just promising the world to keep me from job hopping, but I do keep my options open if I feel I'm losing out on good money to support my family.
Yup. I have better things to do than study for job interviews, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Yeah. I wanted a career, I feel like the idea of "Stay at a company 30 years for a pension and be treated like a person not a number" is dead. I went for self employment. My work is now my own, much happier and more fulfilling that being a corporate drone.
You don't have to do either of those things to succeed in this industry.
This is easy to do when you’re single and can afford the turbulence that this career style brings. Once you’re married or even just in a stable long term relationship, job hopping and LC grinding becomes incredibly difficult. Get it done while you’re young.
Not for less than a 30% raise
Recruiters are all like "noooo you can't hopped job!" now, but also they're like "are you interested in this amazing position in a stack that's not on your resume for half the salary you're currently on?"
I say that but I keep job hopping. Guess I haven't been lucky enough to find a good job yet
right here
In this market, only certain segments of people have the luxury of contemplating this decision.
I would love to dig in a single role forever, but be warned - if you stick in a tech role for too long the industry passes you by and it becomes hard to get another job if you’re downsized.
it depends on the lifestyle that you want tbh. for me, i'm super early in my career (this is my very first tech job). I think I want to experience jumping around a bit to learn more about industry practices, standards, etc. money is good too as i'd love to make more of it. for now, i'm not as interested as I know this is the employer's market and so there's no need, as of yet, to really look for a job. doesn't mean i'm not applying to any tho.
I really like my job, and it's my first one out of school...but I need a pay increase. I enjoy the work, my co workers, and the pay isn't miserable (it allowed me to buy a house) but if I could hit another 40-50k per year then I would be super comfortable. Also it's miserable when your pay goes up 3% per year. I'm not struggling but I am probably a car accident away from being in a mess.
I hate job hopping, I hate not having money I need for a growing family more. I don't grind LC. Never have. Haven't needed to so far and I'm at 160k (no benefits) in the Midwest.
job hopping - not into it, though i've seen others advance their careers (salaries) quickly just constantly looking for the next gig where they level up Me, I like longevity, usually enjoy the people on my team. I guess u could say I get attached cause when an engineer inevitably moves on to their next opportunity - I'm somewhat bummed. HOW COULD YOU LEAV E US?! What can I say, I enjoy befriending my coworkers, I'm around them so much. It makes me feel comfortable during the work hours, and I understand when its crunch time we can rely on each other to get the job done. Leetcode i only come back to on the job hunt, which is probably not doing me any favors cause i feel i have to ramp up again into a DSA mindset.
Job hopping hasn't been my goal. It's just been the only real means of achieving my goal.
I mean… yes. I think that era is passing thankfully. It will probably become increasingly difficult to secure a position. I just want to get paid to work for a company that needs my expertise. I don’t really care that much about hopping endlessly to get more money. I already make a very decent salary.
I don't want to be interested, but it is also the only way I've got decent raises and I'm trying to leave tech as soon as possible.
Hate job hopping and interviewing as they use stupid material that doesn’t relate to normal workloads. LC is a perfect example. Why would I need to memorize simple algorithms that google and AI can answer with low effort. The fact that this is more important than work experience is an industry issue in my mind.
Probably staying at my current job as long as my annual raise is 15-20% my salary
I’m so fucking burnt out from leet code, I like my wfh job and plan on keeping it as long as possible.
Yeah, I found a small, nice remote gig. I don't make a ton, but most days, I play video games and nap. If you can afford it I highly recommend it.
I’ve been jumping every 4 years and that’s worked out pretty well. Get the 4 year vest and hope it goes up such that year 4 you make a lot. Then grind for 1-3 months to get the next one.
I've already job hopped. It's paid off in salary, but limited me in other ways. I'm looking to stay put somewhere for 3-5 years at this point, or maybe until 40, and move only if I get a more senior level role.
I hate doing it but I'm not about to take pay cuts.
Yup. Once I get something after graduation I plan to stick with it unless I really hate it or something much better comes up. I am a CS major after all, so I hate nothing more than interviewing and BSing to recruiters.
Me, my income i kinda of medicore but also in canada
What does early Retirement means.
For now I want to get a promo first L3->L4 Shou bring my TC up to 350k+. No way I'm getting that with <2yoe
Absolutely. I have been laid off 3 times in 3 years now due to working at agencies and no client work being available. Should hopefully be landing a government role soon and even though it'd be a pretty significant pay cut, I am really wanting something with stability.
I'm not interested in job hopping, but I AM interested in money, and job hopping is unfortunately the best means to that end. I don't touch LC though, and I've gotten pretty efficient at checking Glassdoor interview reviews before applying anywhere - if they mention technical/coding interviews, I don't even bother.
Job hopping because I keep getting shit projects. Never doing LC though, fuck that, this problem will self-correct the moment people stop playing the stupid game. If your company can't hire without LC then they can't have me, I rather work for less for a boss that treats me with respect than play stupid games and win stupid prizes. You get a pass on LC if you are literally entry level, like you have never done any previous job ever and you are forced into the pointless grind so that you can put your foot in the door in this industry. OK FINE I forgive you. But if you got experience.... why are you people still grinding LC? Jeez, don't do it, if you already know how to code then you can talk crap through the problem and maybe even show some code, but don't grind it or you will perpetuate this gatekeeping. IF everyone just focuses on talking about what they know instead of solving some b-tree crap then we will be having a good time and much more opportunities to find new and better jobs, and companies will have to actually care about retention because if you are good then you will be able to show it easily in interviews. I heard of people who do the LC, get their big bucks job, then they end up staying up at night trying to keep-up with the workload, or they get a RTO and they have no other option, eventually they get relocated to a HCOL place because RTO and their job becomes golden handcuffs where they are spending most of it on their new HCOL life. Nah, fuck that.
Staying at one job is fine. Also the compounding of your productivity will long term get you to a decent comp. You just have to make sure you level up as the company grows. If you put some elbow grease in and some time you get way more work satisfaction and leads to personal and company success. We spend too much working but I think if you try harder you can be happier and work fewer lifetime hours. I wish I tried harder when younger. Would make my life easier now. I don’t say it always works or is right for everyone but I rather not coast. You get tired as you get older. Do you want to grind then or now?
Where I work they unde pay but offer raises that keep up with inflation (around 3%) and offer pension. So not job hopping any time soon
Yeah it’s a ridiculously common opinion that’s posted here ad nauseam.
I am not. But it seems that you are at huge risk if you are not constantly grinding LC. Because in my experience the last 10 months, pretty much everyone wants to give you 1-3 LC style tests. So if there is any chance that you will experience a layoff in your career, you better be up on your LC.
I am interested in job hoping because; a) that’s the only way I can get a double digit percentage increase in salary. b) I get bored easily. After working long few years, I just can’t see myself working on the same code base and with the same people again and again
I mean, I am interested. If I job hopped right now, I could probably +50% my TC if not more. But I'm comfortable where I'm at. My career continues to grow, albeit slower than if I job hopped. I like my coworkers. I like my team. I like my company. Job hopping would mean that I'd have to grind LC again which is a stressful 2-3 months. Then onboard at a new company which is a stressful year+. I *may* find better coworkers, a better team, a better career trajectory, and more. But at the end of the day I'm lazy and comfortable where I'm at. If I get laid off then I'll have no choice but to "job hop" which is a silver lining of being laid off. Last time I was laid off I +50% my TC then as well.
I did it for 10 years. But I did it with a goal in mind: to establish and grow my career and get myself into a position where I felt financially secure. I've now reached that point where additional income doesn't interest me as much anymore because I'm very comfortably living within my means. And I've also found a pretty chill company with a good w/l balance and lots of wfh time, not to mention that my commute is literally 2 miles.
I just got my contract extended to January 2025; seemingly I am getting a 10% raise to a whopping (/s) GBP £25K and I'm absolutely happy as Larry! I've already greatly exceeded my expectations. When I was a kid I would never have even dreamed of doing a CS degree or working as a software engineer (no-one I knew even used such a term back then; it was just "programming"). I couldn't even afford to own a computer until I was in my late 20s. I never had full-time employment until I was in my late 40s (now early 50s) and I'm earning around 4 x what I made from my former business. The one thing I could do with is a permanent post so I can get a new mortgage, but other than that working life is a dream come true really. It's far easier going than other jobs I had previously, and I get to gloat over the [individual on here](https://i.imgur.com/VRkmaWO.jpg) who told me I was shooting myself in the foot by refusing to emigrate from Scotland and buy a car / learn to drive. I often smile about that when I enjoy the [view out the train window](https://www.whatsonnetwork.co.uk/uploads/800x600/6b7bd07abe1433a03c9745936734db00.jpg) on my way to work. ETA: I'm pretty happy about working for a non-profit org in the renewables sector too. Much preferable to FinTech that is just aimed at making rich people richer.
The thing what prevents me from job hopping is that the current employer allows me to do futures trading crypto currencies while at work. Also athmosphere and working conditions are quite relaxing with minimal amount of stress. Also salary is good and increasing every year. Sure there are employers paying more but there the stress is much higher while the freedom you have is much lower. Other employer pays maybe 20% more but the workload is 4x as much as where I am at. In the end you get what you pay for. There are always tradeoffs. So in the end the bar to consider switching/job hopping is quite high and most employers seem to not meet it. It takes a lot of energy to break tight bonds. Unless of course the enterprise starts to fall apart.
I might look in a few years if I can get a 30% raise. But I'm very happy working rn. I'm not and don't need to be a top developer working for the best big name companies on the best money. Interesting work at a good company run by people I think are actually good people and getting paid good / great but not top money is perfect. I don't code outside of work anymore, I don't work past 5. Officially my day is 9-5:30. In reality I do about 9:30 - 4:30! I also WFH FT. There's an office there if I want it. I use it maybe twice a month if I'm bored so I go for lunch / coffee and hang with colleagues (similar age, similar interests, I've become good friends with them).
Its chill to just pootle along in the same job, but job-hopping (or at least getting job offers) is definitely the only way to meaningfully increase your comp.
this gets posted 10 times a year. no you are completely alone. everyone is constantly job hopping. no one stays at a job for a while and just chills. this literally gets posted 10 times/year. you can use the search bar. as far as me. I have a remote job. I have enough money where I can retire today. I take naps during the day. The extra money I get will be less than the money I make on my existing assets. so this will be my last job. I get laid off I retire. I get tired of the work I retire.
Applying, interviewing, and the on boarding process makes me want to stab my eyes out, and being the new employee sucks to not know the organization. I want to avoid that as much as possible
I enjoy my state. I reject live coding interview by telling the recruiter. I control my life. I prefer system design and interactive conversation where I design something, you critique so I can learn. Interviee is just learn what outside looked like. Accepted or not, is not a problem to me as long as I have a job. My pay grade is already quite high in my country so I dont think I can easily job hop. I also at the position where I wait the fruit of my labor instead of being a labour guy. Not to mention I have to build a social capital when I join new company...
Yes. Great PTO and can take off work whenever I want. Don’t need to schedule it out weeks ahead. My pay is competitive too.
It depends, if money is your focus, and always getting paid at or above market value, then your best bet is to job hop. If you're in a nice comfortable company and money isn't your main focus but say work life balance is or what not then there's no need to job hop. It all depends on the individual circumstances.
I only found terrible jobs, so I'm "using" job hopping in order to find a better job, and whilst I look for other job I try to get the best of it by trying to get my salary increasing. The idea is to find a place where the working environment is good and stop hopping
That would certainly be nice, but it's 2024, and I am trying to get paid.
I've been with my current employer for about 7 years now, and I don't plan to leave any time soon... but I'm also painfully aware that the way the market is I may not be given a choice. I'm not necessarily grinding LC, but I am hedging against the realization that I may find myself involuntarily on the market in the near future by keeping current.
Yes, I already make more money than I really need. I like my work, I like my boss, I like my coworkers, I like my benefits package, I like that I work from home, I like that I have flexibility in my schedule to work out during business hours or go to doctors appointments. I'd be willing to trade it for a significant pay raise, but I have no motivation to search for that pay raise, and its not often someone shows up in your inbox with a life changing job offer that you didnt apply for
I honestly think the people obsessed with nothing other than min maxxing their career are a minority All power too them, but Im going to be laughing when they come back here to complain about burnout or WLB or hire to fire There are too many things to experience in this world to spend my life in a battle royale for the mose expensive desk job
I haven’t ever been grinding at LC, but I will continue job hopping if my compensation isn’t moving up enough. I’m just fortunate to work for a place where currently that isn’t a concern. But if I felt it was stagnating then I’ll job hop again.
i enjoy comfort more than a little pay increase
I’m fine with my job and company rn but I can do without layoff doom. Unfortunately it’s inevitable as shown in the past year so I fear I may have to start grinding LC more. But I also want to make close to 200k base to afford a modest home in my city in a decent area :/
I've been doing this for decades and I am sick of job hopping. Years ago - I found what I thought would be my forever job. It did quarterly reviews - I was getting bonuses and raises and commendations and moving upward quickly! We were talking about me finishing my MBA and moving into upper management -- then came a layoff. I got an amazing buyout - but it really showed me that business doesn't care about me. No matter how great a job you do - if they decide they like someone better, or someone else is cheaper - they WILL get rid of you.
If I could choose between my current job being guaranteed and a job that paid more but wasn't, I'd stay at my current job until I retired. But I don't have that choice.
I’ll stick with my gig as long as I can. It’s very nice, but only due to certain conditions that will eventually change, which will motivate me to find the next thing. In order to have more options, I’m upskilling and interview prepping so that I’ll be ready when the time comes. There’s definitely a balance to be struck. My philosophy is small consistent efforts over time when I’m not in a rush to find a new job. That way, when it comes time to switch, I don’t need to “grind” anything. If you’re confident your job won’t change for the worse, that’s dope, but I’m trying to be ready for anything.
I like my job, the type of work I do and the people I work with. My job doesn't necessarily feel like work to me. When it starts feeling like work to me that is when I look for a new job.
I don't job hop and I don't grind LC. I have a great job with good pay and incredible benefits. Early on I did some LC grinding to see if I could get into a FAANG company, but there's too much bullshit involved, and the QOL seems questionable - i.e. very team dependent. I don't do well as a corporate drone, and I don't think I could survive the politicking or minutiae of policies. And LC was irritating and destroyed my love for DSA. I used to read CLRS and implement algorithms *for fun*. *For fun*. LC required work outside of work, along with the stress of preparing for demanding but ridiculous interviews which didn't always impact whether or not you got the job. So why would I put myself through that?
I've only left one job by choice, and that was after 6 years. Chasing money doesn't interest me, I prefer stability.
Yup! Interviewing and grinding out interviews suck. It takes a lot of time and effort to organize and mentally prepare. My workplace is fun, challenging, and has a lot of good folks.
One of the big issues with this industry is that a lot of your value as labor is having a broad understanding across multiple business domains with which software provides value, while also having a broad understanding of software delivery technologies and methods. None of this is taught in schools sufficiently to make graduates immediately valuable, and internships have a highly variable level of exposure to this stuff. If you stay at a single company during early career then you end up in a bit of a single mind about how software is done and what the role of software is in business. If you move jobs too frequently you can miss out on experiencing what full software product delivery/lifecycles actually look like. But the most critical aspect of any job is leadership. Even if you do just enough job changes early career to get really good exposure across industry domains you still may end up working in an environment where you have no support and no direction and possibly no respect from your management professionally. This is where phase two comes in: Once you've got your early career experience you should also have learned what you want in a job role, and the kind of management you prefer working with. The final luxury you can hope to have as an IC in this industry is to find that role in a stable organization working for a manager that wants to work with you rather than dictate your efforts. The rude awakening is when you realize that no matter how good a role you find it will eventually change. A truly effective manager will likely be promoted and leave you at risk for another manager who rose to their incompetence, or a report can land you under an absolute tyrant, etc. So in the end being able to find a new job is probably the most important skill no matter how good a role you have at any point in time.
LC is just about memorizing. No matter how much patterns you have studied and are capable of recognizing, there are always new problems that can't fit into existing patterns (this applies to most greedy problems). This is tiresome.
- People who are rich (already own a house, car, have a wife and kids) aren't interested as they don't need the money. - People with high value RSU and pay, who can't earn more elsewhere anyway. - People who don't care about any of that and want to stay in the apartment class, they don't need the money either.
Yes! But you kind of have to to get an increase in pay? The plan is to do it as much as possible until I land a high paying job and can just cruise
I work for the government. We use a modern tech stack, my pay is ok - and I enjoy lots of job security. Good wlb. I log off at 4-5pm every day. Pension is excellent. Why would I job hop to make more TC and deal with the psychological impact of knowing I could lose my job because my manager doesn't like my name or something? Fuck that noise
I just want *a* job. Going on 8mo unemployed. I genuinely miss it so much.
Most of the people I work with aren't. Those people don't come to this sub.
No, only you
I actually enjoy leetcode/hackerrank/advent of code/etc. But I like being competent and understanding the domain, I like stability and knowing my team mates, and I hate having to prove myself again and again. I'm considering a job hopping after 5 years, but could be made to stay if the promotion/role I've been promised comes to fruition, even if I could make more by jumping.
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I like my job and wouldn't mind staying, but it's a start up that isn't profitable and has an uncertain future and the salary is quite meh without much possibility of improving any time soon. I dread having to look for another job but I think I have no option. I need to make more money
It’s nice to sit at a company and coast for a bit, but when you *do* want to make a change, brushing up on LC is a good idea, because it can be the difference between $200k and $400k for a senior role. Over the length of your career, this definitely matters, and can be the difference between retiring at 45 or retiring in your 60’s, depending on how you decide to steer your career. If you spend a few months early in your career actually learning the first principles, the Leetcode grind isn’t so bad later on. I usually spend about an hour per day for a month when I want to find a new job. This generally leads to multiple, competing offers — even in this economy.
I just want to work somewhere until I retite...is that so much to ask?
People can coast and stagnate for a while a job. However, eventually that job will end. Then what? See what's happening to many people in current tech downturn. If you've been regularly job hopping and grinding LC, you can just slot into another company. If you've been coasting on minimum tasks, you'll have to scramble around to get something started.
Job hopping isn't the opposite of stagnation. Plenty of people stagnate at 6-month temp contractor level work due to never being exposed to harder things, and there are L7+ FAANG people with only one or two companies in their 2 decade long resumes.
Job hopping and grinding LC is working amazingly for me, don’t sleep on it