Someone I used to work with gets paid a truly ridiculous amount of money because she changes jobs around every 14 months to 2 years. She hates every job she takes and is constantly worried that her boss hates her in every role. I don’t think she’s happy, despite the huge pay. I’d rather be happy. I work to live, not live to work.
That’s the thing, paying bills doesn’t make you happy, it just temporarily eliminates the drop in happiness that would occur if you didn’t pay those bills.
Money can’t directly buy happiness, but it certainly smooths out the path. Also, money may not be able to buy happiness, but not-money can’t buy anything.
I agree with you that the pursuit of an ever-increasing bank account is probably not a route to happiness (or more importantly contentedness, happiness is fleeting), but the reality of our world is that not having a livable amount of money tends to put direct blocks in front of your contentedness, which having money tends to dissolve.
I’m in a unique and enviable position where my work is basically nothing on the day to day. It pays enough to get by, barely, but it gives me so much free time that well… That aspect of work makes me happy lmao
Yeah, i have a friend like that. Gets paid twice (maybe 3x?) what i do but has no friends and is miserable. Well, things have been getting better for him at least and i’ve been making more money lately so i guess things are looking up.
I was born into a family run company. Gave them 10 years of my life. The first few years I worked really hard and got a 2-3 dollar raise. Shortly after, minimim wage went up to 50 cents below what I was making. I did not get another raise until 2-3 years down the line. Regardless who your employer is, get treated fairly or leave for somewhere that will treat you fairly.
And if you left based on that stagnant wage, I bet they gave you the guilt trip about loyalty, and how hard it is to operate a small business, as if that somehow makes it okay to underpay you.
They weren’t too bad when I left and even pitched in for some of my schooling. I still don’t feel bad taking a couple cans of soup whenever I visit though. And the work did teach me a lot of skills and a great work ethic.
It’s hardly dismissive. If there’s a lack of unions in a field, how does that problem get resolved? By starting one.
Sure they could provide more resources and information , except oh wait, someone else literally a post above did.
No one ever said starting one is easy, like anything worth doing it’s a LOT of work, but that’s a complete different matter than the comment being “actively unhelpful, [or] dismissive”
Edit:it was the same guy who posted the comment with more information. Maybe instead of you being actively unhelpful and dismissive, ask questions about the process, seek help, and don’t just dismiss what someone else said.
Unironically, this. At my previous company we started holding “engineering meetings” that deliberately excluded leadership, and had a lot of jokes about starting a union. By the time I quit it seemed like everyone was on board, so if anyone really wanted to push it then it could have happened.
I’ve seen school districts with union web dev positions. They don’t pay the best but the benefits are usually pretty good and you’re not likely to work more than 40 hours a week.
My wife is a dev in a union for a government adjacent not for profit LoL. Think along the lines of an NTSB type organization but not American.
She’s got 3 raises in the past year, AND her role got recatogorized where she had to get her salary adjusted to be on par with everyone in her new unit so she’ll be getting another one along with back pay for 4 months. I don’t even understand how it’s been handled but she’s up over 25% since last year.
So the advice above is solid. I’m hoping to retire early and become a stay at home dad if she keeps this up.
Since you mention it and I have little knowledge on the subject: How would your average person in the U.S. (in this case) find and apply for union jobs?
I read a few times that there is a breaking point between people who switch jobs every 3 years on average. Any less often you make significantly less at retirement.
I’m sure there is a value that’s too often but I’ve tried to stay pretty close to the 3 year mark and we make about 5x what my wife and I wanted to make at retirement.
Or some more sage advice: keep interviewing and an eye on salaries and compare that to your realistic prospectives at your job. Employers aren’t dumb, and if they see that you move around a lot they might not even bother hiring you.
My manager does this. If he sees that a job candidate hops jobs a lot he won’t give them an interview. That being said, our yearly raises meet/exceed inflation and he’s a pretty good manager
If someone’s spent less than 2 years at their 3 most recent jobs, there’s a high chance they’re job hopping. Especially if they’re engineers in a discipline that can take months to a year to be fully capable of the tasks needed.
Im pretty senior now, you’d pass me by and the most valuable thing I’d do is to reduce that learning time.
I don’t know what you do, but in my IT jobs I’ve seen long onboarding times are due companies not focusing on their product, eg: a finance company writing their own authentication system, or maintaining someone’s vanity project who has long since departed. Get rid of that and you can bring people in off the street.
Get rid of that and you can bring people in off the street.
Yeah, you can’t do that with engineering. Especially when you’re building models to support multiple product lines and have physical testing you have to match to
My position required at least a year to learn everything, and I’m a pretty fast learner. My coworkers jobs require a similar level of training, even with experience. If a candidate spent less than 2 years at their 3 most recent jobs then I agree with my manager that they weren’t worth potentially wasting time on.
For junior positions maybe. For senior and especially principals there is a ton of value to continuity. When a senior engineer leaves it’s almost like replacing the entire team in terms of overhead if there isn’t a natural successor. And when principals leave you end up losing vision as well as that leadership. This can kill entire projects of it happens unexpectedly.
That’s about as logical and as loaded as an assumption as being fickle. It could also mean the person isn’t qualified and other employers figured that out. But again these are assumptions. In their shoes they are right to be wary and probably have some experiences backing up that caution.
It does work for a while but eventually higher end stuff they will pass you on. Training a new employee is about 6 months worth of work, so spinning someone up just on new projects/ history takes a good chunk of time.
This depends on the job and role, I know plenty people who tend to be flung at a project for 6-8 months, then pivoted to another, ad infinitum. For them, changing company etc is only slightly more inconvenient for them and the employer than shifting internally.
2ish years is the Goldilocks zone of job hoping. Less then that and you look more trouble than you are worth. More than that and you miss out on real pay raises. Though of course if you have it good then you don’t have to jump.
This is pretty dumb advice, because someone who’s hopping every 2 years and getting passed on interviews is still getting more interviews than someone who’s not applying at all.
How much is moving around a lot? Because 2-3 years turn over is pretty common in IT and it doesn’t seem to prevent being hired. It may even be considered as better experience than the one of an engineer that worked on a single system for 10 years.
I jump jobs something like every 2-3 years and frankly have never found that to be an impediment to finding new employment. And every time it’s been for more money. I’m sure that some hiring managers see this as a problem but I also think that most of them understand the realities of today’s job market.
I’m not saying you’re wrong…and as I age, I’m asked more and more about my job hopping history…but I am starting to feel like the negatives of a long history of job hopping are in many ways balanced out by the long history itself.
I’m a CAD drafter with 17 years of experience in 5 different jobs. In interviews it’s more and more common to get questions about my plans for the future and how long I plan to stay with (company that is interviewing me). Each time, I tell them that I’m prepared to retire from their company in a few decades as long as they take care of me and keep a good working environment and competitive compensation.
Whether I’m just in a good market for my skills, or job hopping isn’t the deterrent some people seem to think it is, I have been getting a constant stream of recruiters filling my inbox for the past decade, whether I’ve been looking or not, and I’ve honestly never not gotten an offer for any position I was actually interested in.
If I felt it was a good fit and was interested in talking to them, it has always led to an interview, and if I was still interested after that, an offer. Every time. Granted, often the offer was way less than I was currently making or in the interview we realize it’s not a good fit…but never once has my job history been an issue that comes between a position that’s a good fit and a job offer.
From one person’s experience (mine): They don’t read CVs that closely. I’ve got a couple of 1 year jobs (not contracts) and they’re more interested in what I did rather than why so short. If they ask I tell them it’s because I didn’t like the position but gave it a go for a year. I also have a 2 year gap in employment none of them are interested in for 4 jobs now, they don’t even spot the missing years and I’ve had to point it out in interviews because it’s a story of how I deal with big tasks.
If they are that petty that they’ll pass me over because of something like that then that employers policies would raise more flags than I’d want to deal with anyway.
When hiring you have hundreds of CVs pass by, I’m looking for experience, we’ll sort out these other details in the interview.
Caveat: I am older now, more senior but never had issues finding work.
Scheming EU to make an EU travel plan for countries that didnt voluntarily leave the EU to pursue some racist bullshit propaganda that even the people who started brexit, deep down, didnt want, and never thought would actually happen.
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