I remember seeing numbers several years ago that the average retention at Uber was around 18 months.
My big learning from employer hoping as a JavaScript developer is that it’s risky. There is a universal assumption that the people who do that work fall below an accepted baseline of delivery and maturity compared with other developers as qualified by the amount of tooling and hand holding they require. That said many employers will not invest much in these employees and thus expect them to jump ship.
The other side of that coin is that employees see this too. Those who tend to be more competent and have a really good situation with their employer tend to be the people that stick around knowing they are missing out on pay raises by moving around. For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it.
> For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it.
tbh when I'm on the hiring side, this is why I consider a long tenure in the same role at a company a... not really a red flag, but maybe a yellow flag, something to talk about in an interview.
Hate to say it, but lots of long-tenured employees are in this situation. They remain at companies because of interia. Processes have been built around them; they have tribal/domain knowledge which is poorly documented and not readily replaceable; they may be functionally a "C player" but they have additional value they bring via historical context ("Oh, this bit of weird nonsense code? Yeah, I remember we hacked that in right after the acquisition in 2017, we don't need it now...") It's a real concern that someone coming from a situation where they only do ~4 hours of actual work per week might not be able to handle a new job where they have to provide value through other means, i.e. shipped code.
It's not a total disqualification of a candidate for me, obviously, but it'd certainly be something I'd ask about.
Your response is curious to me because it suggests multiple unstated biases. I am inferring you suggest:
1. Ambition is more a product of social mobility than product delivery.
2. Success is more a product of prior established salary than personal goals.
From an economics perspective these seem weird to me for two reasons. The goal of economics is always to redistribute resources to a more desirable pattern.
One of the first things I look for in job interviews from interviewers and hiring managers is perception of bias. This is easily discovered by looking at what they want which can be some mixture of technical competency, charm/vanity, or communications dominance. Interviewers want to control the conversation, so just let them until the conversation concludes or I achieve communications dominance passively. I don't want to play games, but when there is noise in the inter-personal communication I have to be a little bit smarter than I appear. I just want a job doing what the paper says, but people are silly.
The second reason why its weird is that in the past I have been that 10x (or much more) developer because my goals are different. The only point of software is automation, which means if I can automate my own job then I don't have to do it either. I usually keep this to myself, because the goal is time maximization so I can do other things with my day while delivering superior quality work. If I told other people about it my peers would whine and I would be tasked to do things outside of product delivery to compensate for their whining. I am certainly not looking for anybody's adoration. I just want to do less stupid.
> The only point of software is automation, which means if I can automate my own job then I don't have to do it either. I usually keep this to myself
I'm sure most hiring managers would agree, all of this is strongly reinforcing my initial assessment that long-tenured employees in the same company and position are yellow flags that need to be handled with care :)
Huh. I would have the exact same response to your questioning my work ethic and competence based on tenure. Definitely a yellow flag that a company could have a toxic busywork culture and doesn’t value experience.
I am coming up on 10 years and I frequently help my newer peers avoid pitfalls we fell into previously. Historical context is useful. That doesn’t mean I live there.
My big learning from employer hoping as a JavaScript developer is that it’s risky. There is a universal assumption that the people who do that work fall below an accepted baseline of delivery and maturity compared with other developers as qualified by the amount of tooling and hand holding they require. That said many employers will not invest much in these employees and thus expect them to jump ship.
The other side of that coin is that employees see this too. Those who tend to be more competent and have a really good situation with their employer tend to be the people that stick around knowing they are missing out on pay raises by moving around. For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it.