High performers job hop when they can't find a high performance culture

https://thedailydeveloper.substack.com/p/high-performers-job-hop-when-they

by todsacerdoti • 2 years ago

65 60 2 years ago

thedailydeveloper.substack.com

barrkel2• 2 years ago

You're hiring because you've got a bit more work than you have people for. You're probably under a bit of stress, timelines are a bit tight.

Do you want someone who has strong evidence of job-hopping, and believe they will commit more time than average to your environment, on the basis that the job hopping is due to high performance?

Or do you want someone who's going to stick around a bit longer, on the basis that much of the value of someone in a job is actually domain knowledge specific to the business and the code, rather than transferrable skills?

When I see a lot of job hopping on a CV, I tend not to take a chance. Those folks haven't shown evidence of investing in non-transferrable knowledge and processes. They might have high performance transferrable skills, but chances are they'll want to change how things are done, then not stick around to see them all the way through.

lovich• 2 years ago

I manage a team and hire people so I have an incentive to look for people who don’t job hop and have conversations with peers on candidates around this.

I find that I can’t bring myself to care too much to evaluate people on if they are “job hoppers”. Every place I’ve worked at that wants to avoid it based on what I am told by my leaders and HR, also doesn’t give raises even keeping up with inflation unless you manage to get promoted. And they usually have a million reasons to not promote someone come yearly reviews.

This industry incentivize job hopping and you’re better off treating employees as a stream and figuring out how to manage project estimates and knowledge transfer around that.

Obviously doesn’t apply if your company really puts in effort to maintain employees long term, but you’re in an exceptional case if that is true

worble• 2 years ago

This industry incentivize job hopping and you’re better off treating employees as a stream and figuring out how to manage project estimates and knowledge transfer around that

Yup, it's totally this. I think on average I've moved every 2 years or so (some longer, some shorter), but every time I've done so I've taken the offer back to my current company and gone "Look, I don't want to move jobs, that's a hassle, if you matched the offer (or even just came close enough) I'd stay" and never, not a single time, has a company ever done that. At the end of the day, I've gotta look out for myself.

lmeyerov• 2 years ago

Yep, I very occasionally see natural '10x' types who can jump into any codebase or business.... and more often see '10x' types who learn the environment more slowly but then speedrun using their other skills once they are situated. Latter bet is safer, a lot of the bigger fun is year 2, 3.

For job hoppers, I often see folks who don't realize they are leaving behind landmines for their colleagues. They haven't had as much of a chance to learn from their mistakes. They learn from inheriting, but often not at a 'senior' level of decision making.

So we hire fewer and slower, and work to maintain a team that values doing well at their craft and building ambitious things that take time.

robertlagrant2• 2 years ago

folks who don't realize they are leaving behind landmines for their colleagues

Yes - people who never live with the outcomes of their own work / decisions are less likely to have learned good longer-term practices.

sneed_chucker2• 2 years ago

It entirely depends on the trajectory of the hopping. For example, a year at local company, then two years at a fortune 500, then hopping to FAANG or FAANG-adjancent company could be a positive sign.

Seniority of the candidate is another thing to consider. Job hopping every 1.5 to 2 years in the first 5 or so years of one's career is normal and often expected among US software engineers. However, having a bunch of short stints later in one's career, in my experience, has translated to weaker hires.

mingus882• 2 years ago

Short stints later in one’s career can simply mean that person has the experience to quickly identify a dead end role and the network and resume to easily jump to something better.

I understand this can look like a “weaker hire” to an employer but as an older engineer in this industry, my radar for BS is keen and I don’t want to waste my time at a place where I know I won’t have an impact.

no_wizard2• 2 years ago

Or do you want someone who's going to stick around a bit longer, on the basis that much of the value of someone in a job is actually domain knowledge specific to the business and the code, rather than transferrable skills?

Do the incentive structures at your company match this? If they do, thats great, but I've worked at places who don't even give raises that beat inflation and still wonder why people leave within 1-3 years.

Typically what I've seen of job hopping, is more often than not their previous employer simply didn't have a proper incentive structure to keep a good engineer around very long. Alot of people leave when they realize they'll never get more than a 3-4% raise, for example.

If you desire employees to stay around for awhile and really learn the product and business deeply, it needs to be incentivized properly

barfbagginus• 2 years ago

They're saying they're one of those employers who would balk at a 10% raise. So they don't take a chance on employees that will have standards.... They'll all leave the business in the lurch when they realize nothing is going to improve.

Instead, they recruit wet blankets that will take one for the team with 3-4% raises, for 3 to 4 years or more. If indentured servitude contracts were still legal, they would be a fan.

anon291• 2 years ago

As a job hopper that's done well for myself; Realistically, I don't want a job with that much stress. If timelines are tight, it's usually management's fault (and I can say this... I've been in management in many positions). In my experience, they don't compensate you for it at all, and you can easily (at least for me) find a job that pays more with less stress. Take that as you will.

I've also been in the hiring manager role and have no problem with job hoppers. I find them to generally be more ambitious.

banish-m43• 2 years ago

There is no reward for suffering or misery. It usually includes some level of unreasonableness.

Sustainable environments seek a pace conducive to life rather than absurd crash schedules, drama, churn, and burgeoning tech debt.

banish-m43• 2 years ago

Rockstar ninja Not Invented by Me syndrome. Implements new tech stack, uses obscure technologies, or redoes things in nonstandard ways (usually with lots of patches and hacks but without documentation) to create a platform only they can maintain but then move on and sticks everyone else with the "check" of support and extensibility.

b3ing• 2 years ago

This can happen for anyone. Ever been excited after joining a semi big company and new project to help do the best you can to also build your resume only to find out they don’t really care about UX, or maybe they allow visual bugs to stay, maybe accessibility is “too expensive or limiting”, after awhile you realize it doesn’t matter to them so you start to care less also

pc86• 2 years ago

This reminds me of that bell curve meme. Yeah, if you are a hotshot / rockstar / high performer / whatever, yes you're going to job hop if you end up in mediocre environments. But you'll end up job hopping from the exact same companies if you're just not a good developer and you can't keep up in even mediocre companies. There's also a few reasons you might appear to be job hopping that have nothing to do with your skills.

Using length of previous employments as a metric in ascertaining someone's skills isn't worth it. There's too many variables and the possible reasons are too varied. Maybe they're absolutely amazing and all those companies aren't. Maybe they're really bad and they can't keep up. Maybe they had family issues and they were demanding jobs. Maybe they had health issues and they care more about money now than they did before. Maybe they exited on a side project and they don't care about money nearly as much as they did before.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

Using length of previous employments as a metric in ascertaining someone's skills isn't worth it.

It depends on the nature of the type of labor needed. If an employer needs a warm body, then evaluating length of previous employments might be worth it. If an employer needs a high performer, then it might not be worth it.

kayodelycaon• 2 years ago

In the places I've worked, skill wasn't the primary metric. You had to be good enough but working well in the team was more important. As long as you met the minimum skill requirements for the position, we prefer people who increase overall team efficiency.

We tend to avoid "rockstar developers" in my current company because many wouldn't be happy here.

I happened to be a "rockstar" right now because my skills and culture are an ideal match. My team is small and does a lot, so we really can't afford to hire the wrong person. Better to leave the position open.

spamizbad• 2 years ago

As a manager who reviews resumes frequently, I've never really looked down on "job hopping" provided their stints weren't exclusively short (A year or less). I feel like people spend way too much effort trying to suss out "vibes" from a resume. I'm far more interested in having a conversation to understand how they work, their approach to problem solving, testing, how they manage constraints (time or technical ones) and getting a sense for what they'd be like as a team member. And I'd like to see their code and have them talk through it.

I always ask people to just explain why they left their last few gigs. You can read between the lines on the answers and typically they're straight-forward, sympathetic reasons.

candiodari• 2 years ago

What about consultants? I currently am on a "mission" of 1 year 3 months, but really the original assignment was 6 months, which has been prolonged 2 months, 3 months (really, with a change of function), and now (maybe, to be approved) until the end of the year, which would make it 1 year 8 months. But that's exceptional. And really, these were ~10 months in one function, then 5 months (for now) in another part of the company (double consultancy ... sigh). So in at least one interpretation I haven't held down a job for a year in ~4 years. Of course, I did have the same employer for 7 years. But I see my actual employer, and my manager there, maybe 2 times per year.

Because holding a single mission at a customer as a (probably expensive) consultant for a year ... I'd say my average is 8 months. My record is 2 years 7 months.

bpodgursky• 2 years ago

I'd make it clear on the resume that these were all consulting jobs under the same parent employer (make the formal employer the top bullet, indent for the engagements you want to highlight).

egeozcan• 2 years ago

I also did consulting for a long time and never mentioned my customers in my CV, I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to.

rich_sasha2• 2 years ago

My counterpoint is that it takes time for someone to become productive in a tech job. In my pocket of the industry, I'd say as long as 3-9 months. In fact, in that time the employee is a time sink: you get less done as you're still onboarding the employee.

So if they are going to leave after a year, that's a big disincentive to hire, regardless of how they are at problem solving.

Sure, there's good reasons to leave quickly, but if these stack up, I'm inclined to pass.

CPLNTN• 2 years ago

I’ve seen this point used a lot and never agreed to it. I think it’s true only for big already established companies/systems, and absolutely not true for startups and consulting jobs. Especially because in those type of environments companies tends to hire for specific tech stacks and business knowledge.

brooksbp• 2 years ago

Are you really high performance if you can assess the situation but elect to quit instead of influence it?

therobot24• 2 years ago

well....yea you can be high performance and _just_ focus on what you're interested in, but agree - pushing yourself to be leadership without being a supervisor to _build_ 'the high performing culture that can deliver something great' is really special

LogHouse• 2 years ago

Good question. For context, I am a high performer in a low performing team with a lower performing manager. The company has rated me as “highest talent” which only one other person on our 50+ department received. To answer your question, I tried what you suggest: influence.

Turns out, people are often intimidated in talent when they have no desire to replicate it - this is especially true for management. Even if I was able to influence others, there’s nobody left to influence me.

Not to mention, it’s makes your workload significantly more when you’re the only one researching things, asking question, improving things, etc.

So, in short, yes you can be talented and elect to quit rather than influence.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Management that's open to influence is / should be a magnet to high performers.

But the weed-common presence of conservative management is what makes disruption possible.

Swings and roundabouts.

LightFog• 2 years ago

Yes - if someone wants you to fix their broken process or company they can explicitly ask you to and pay you suitably for it, otherwise there are plenty of other places for high performers to choose to spend their valuable time.

mrbluecoat• 2 years ago

I spent years in a toxic culture trying to "influence it". I managed to inspire my team but it was just an outlier island in a corporate ocean I couldn't change. Ultimately the stress and exhaustion resulted in medical depression and I needed to leave for health reasons.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Knowing whether a culture / management team can be influenced is a skill of it's own.

I'd think that high performers would develop that skill fairly quickly. If they're job hoping they'll learn to sniff out the signals.

For example: if they say they encourage change for the better, but continually overload those who may be able to influence the changes with day to day work, then those managers / that culture will be resistant / allergic to influence.

If Sprint X is dedicated to learning and improvement but always seems to be full of last minute bug fixes, testing, overflow work, then even if influence is on their menu, they ain't got the ingredients to cook it up.

alexhutcheson• 2 years ago

Useful blog post about this sort of situation: https://lethain.com/hard-to-work-with/

robertlagrant2• 2 years ago

Are you really high performance if you can assess the situation but elect to quit instead of influence it?

So - high performance aside, this is the route I took in my last company. I felt the engineering team was good - great, even - but the engineering manager left and I moved into that post because I felt that an external hire might risk the team's currently effectiveness. It was a big change though; IC to 25-person engineering team across multiple products, and in a regulated environment. It's not done lightly, and given people can (or could) get paid loads for doing IC work, moving is also a good choice.

slotrans2• 2 years ago

You really think The New Guy can change an entire corporate culture through sheer force of will? You are literally the lowest person on the totem pole. You have ZERO social status, ZERO influence. If the rest of the org/company is culturally aligned around seriously bad practices, you are going to sound like an crazy person, even if you are the only sane one in the room. You are simultaneously Sisyphus and Cassandra.

debacle2• 2 years ago

Placement is a huge problem. Recruiters clearly aren't the answer. Six stage tech interviews are also not the answer.

I know hires that I have passed on for major red flags who have went on the Meta/Amazon/Apple. I've also had the pleasure to work with phenomenal new grads who should have been at Meta/Amazon/Apple, but for whatever reason struggled to even be interviewed.

Statistically, it's likely pretty rare to be working in a job that closely meets your competency and drive. It's much more likely that you are above/below your preference, which in my experience causes anxiety - when you are outclassed, but also especially when you are the lone "rockstar ninja" on a team.

Solving placement is a problem that the industry isn't interested in solving. Why do I say that? The value in solving placement is worth billions of dollars, and yet nothing really seems to have changed in the last 20 years. If anything, hiring is far more complex/expensive, but the quality of placement is no higher than it was in the early 2000s.

psychlops2• 2 years ago

I've gotta ask, what happened in the early 2000's to make that your milestone?

debacle2• 2 years ago

I've only been in the industry for about that long. :)

tech_tuna• 2 years ago

It's funny that you didn't mention Google. They used to be "the" techies tech company.

thdc• 2 years ago

I feel like I've been in this situation for the past year - the place I'm working at had a large culture shift for the worse.

I would change jobs, but I hate interviewing and everything else in the process, so instead I work at my standards and stopped trying to impose them on others.

I'm not satisfied at work, but personal projects and activities help fill the void (as a software engineer). I'm never sure if a down period is temporary or not, so I'll always tough it out for a bit.

I started looking for a new position very recently, though, since it's been long enough.

toast0• 2 years ago

I would change jobs, but I hate interviewing and everything else in the process

Networking helps. Who did you work with in the past that meets your standards... Get in touch, ask them where they're working and if they know of any openings.

Often times you skip at least some screening BS, you may also get more of the interview time set for them convincing you to join, rather than trying to see if they want you. Depends on the place and the strength of recomendation.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

My satisfaction in my personal life is definitely what keeps me happy to grind away at my workplace (which isn't really too bad, but the will to take risks to actually improve seems "thin").

It can't last forever, though, so there's an inevitable reckoning on the horizon.

tyleo• 2 years ago

I'm not satisfied at work

I feel this somewhat but I’ve realized it’s somewhat seasonal and more a matter of perspective.

I’ve had good times and bad times at work and they just come and go. During the good times I double down on my work. I put in more because I get more out. During the bad times I focus on personal projects. I do the job as a professional but don’t waste time trying to knock it out of the park when I know I won’t.

I just look for fulfillment where it comes naturally and don’t try to squeeze it out where it doesn’t.

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Well said, well balanced.

Havoc• 2 years ago

When a high performer encounters a shitty company culture, they want to quit.

That’s just as true for average performers.

I just don’t buy the premise here that high performers think different on this.

Everyone wants to work for a pleasant, high performing, well managed company not just high performers.

Professional job hoppers on the other hand is absolutely a thing. Realistically that is the most reliably way of earning more

BLKNSLVR5• 2 years ago

Depends on the average performer. I know a high performer who was actually intimidated by the high performance of other high performers, so the average average performer may feel exposed or unworthy or a level of guilt at internally perceived lack of contribution in comparison.

Human psychology is a funny thing.

mingus882• 2 years ago

Imposter syndrome affects people at all levels

bitmasher92• 2 years ago

Sometimes people leave because their ambition is larger than the environment allows. I have a story of when I did just that.

Early in my career I joined a company and I knew from day one that it was going to be an awful experience. I knew the product was going to fail, and my team seemed unconcerned about this inevitability. I hadn’t realized this in the interview. I left after six months, and I spent all of them preparing myself and searching for the best possible next move. When I looked back two years later the company no longer offered the product I was working for, and every single member of my team also left. The experience was an expensive lesson in what things I should look for in a job interview.

x86x872• 2 years ago

This is confirmation bias.

Everyone decides for themselves and you own your career and growth though.

bitmasher92• 2 years ago

While I agree I was influenced by confirmation bias to recall an anecdote that supports the blog’s argument, I don’t think it’s very meaningful to call out. It’s most important to consider confirmation bias if you are being overly supportive or dismissive of an argument, beyond what the evidence suggests. It would also be important to consider confirmation bias before making decisions.

nine_zeros• 2 years ago

High performers job hop when

- They aren't compensated proportionately for their work.

- They aren't recognized proportionately for their work. e.g. I have seen solid engineers leave because management thought they were just doing "maintenance" only to have entire product lines go on fire after they left. Turns out, your remaining high performers can get overloaded too.

- The culture undervalues that individual's ethos. Some high performers prefer collaboration, others prefer competition. If the work environment cannot suit their ethos, they will leave to find another place where they can thrive better.

nottorp• 2 years ago

Don't forget that job hopping is still the easiest way to get a significant raise...

walrushunter• 2 years ago

It doesn't matter why someone job hops, I still don't want them on my team.

Even someone with a perfectly innocent reason for job hopping (say for example, the candidate's spouse has a job that requires the candidate to move cities often) is still someone who is a high risk to job hop on me.

x86x872• 2 years ago

Do not agree. Unless they cannot stay in place for more than a couple of months I don't really care. People put too much weight on having bodies fill their seats and not very much weight on the quality of the output.

listenallyall2• 2 years ago

Not a surprise, high-performance people run into all kinds of obstacles in an average or low-skill workplace.

Others in the company simply putting in a basic 9-5 don't necessarily appreciate raised expectations or a higher throughput. Managers/execs enjoying fruits of expensive 3rd party contracts (travel, dinners, kickbacks) push back hard when the high-performer suggests doing those tasks/functions internally. Colleagues, even if well-meaning, may not be able to "keep up" or worse, make the same mistakes repeatedly. Getting support from other departments can be very difficult due to "how we've always done it" or "not how we do things here" syndromes. Mismatched levels of effort or motivation among team members. Etc etc, the list is nearly endless, but they all usually lead towards the high performer looking for work elsewhere.

banish-m43• 2 years ago

High performance people are sometimes pushed out by lower performance coworkers who feel threatened. Also, B managers hire C tech leads, who hire D ICs.

Another trap to avoid nearer to the high performance side is allowing elitism or tiers of snobbery. Hire people who are regular cool or who you can at least tolerate.

slotrans2• 2 years ago

Yeah. 7 jobs in a row. Maybe the next dice roll will work out, or maybe I'll finally leave the industry.

High performers job hop when they can't find a high performance culture

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