Recently on social media there's been a conversation about switching jobs each year in order to have your compensation raised. I noticed the comment sections of these postings were all for job hopping to gain better compensation. Is it truly worth it? How long can you do it? Will it impact you negatively? Here is my best advice for those early in the career considering adopting this strategy.
For a short amount of time, it is not the worst strategy. Big companies are not likely to continuously give you raises each year to match your experience level. The example I saw was a person in the tech industry starting out at 40K per year fresh out of college and on his 4th job in 4 years he was making 110K. While that sounds fantastic, 4 years is probably where I would cut this strategy off. Eventually companies are going to want to know if they can rely on you to see thing through. Personally, as a recruiter, if you have more than 3 jobs in 5 years, it's a red flag and I will likely remove that candidate from my consideration. Now when you're young, I think you can get away with this. Chalk it up to finding your home or gaining experience with different companies, or just not having the right fit yet. Eventually, it will catch up to you. If continued, you'd be labeled as a job hopper and no manager wants to commit to someone that won't commit to them. You would have to start stacking 3 years minimum at different companies in order to become a more attractive candidate. If you want to move up the ladder, eventually you will have to commit to an opportunity for longer than a year or two.
