Right.....
If you stay in the same job longer than 7 years they can hire someone new at less money.
Our economy does not reward longevity.
In the 1980’s I was a 20-something. I was earning about 10% less than the engineers doing the same job who had been there 20-plus years. I figured this was due to the awesome retirement program. But I had to be there 10 years to vest and you had to stay for some number of points, which I can’t recall. They were composed of your age and years of service. But to get the maximum you’d basically have to have started at 20-something and stayed 30 years. By the 1980’s it was impossible to stay that long and they would lay you off depending on where you stood in the retirement system, meaning if you weren’t “connected” you wouldn’t get the maximum points. So, the engineers who stayed were screwed.
Now the same is true of salary shrinkage, but there is no defined benefit retirement plan. (Unless you’re in government. Then, not only is retirement a good plan, with medical, but they can’t or won’t lay you off. You can be a dead man at work and they won’t fire you.)
If you hop every 2 years, you will soon be unemployable.
Job hopping is a great way to increase your wages, but the cost is life stability. It’s hard to get roots when you switch jobs all the time, since eventually that will mean switching towns, states, maybe even countries. Not to mention the fact that as you keep increasing your price tag you keep increasing what they expect. Nope, I’m very OK making less money without moving or working overtime.
In general, recruiters are targeting the same set of job hoppers with attractive offers which have to be attractive to get the job hoppers to take them.
During the worst of the Obama recession, some friends and I put together a serious proposal to rent some of the glut of vacant office space and charge people a nominal fee to work for us so they would have the prestige of a job and an office cube from which to be recruited.
We debated about the deception such a plan would entail and, in the end, decided not to go forward with it for that reason.
Yes, I tried this lousy advice once.
I moved from a job where I was respected and had friends, to a job where my boss was an idiot (thought degrees Rankine and degrees Kelvin were the same thing, went through three textbooks that showed he was wrong, and still thought they were the same) and a crook (stole, and used, patented designs from his previous employer).
I learned that if you are only working for the money, it is unlikely the you will be happy with your job.
No one got a 3% raise this year where I work. A few of us got 2.5%.
No. This isn’t amusing. Not in the slightest.
There is a big difference between 10 years of experience, and 1 year of experience 10 times.
What is not factored into the equation is the value of your personal network that gets developed over time. You establish a reputation when you are a long-timer at a significant company. You learn how the organization works, and if the company is large enough, how the entire enterprise works.
Nobody can do that in a series of 1-2 year hops.
-PJ
Man, has this guy been brain washed or what? What freaking planet has he been living on?
Get a brain and get out the house once in a while Cameron King!
If these raise percentages cited apply to both public-sector, and private-sector jobs, then it looks like the private sector is not giving raises at all. ?
Hubby got a letter from the company at the end of 2013 that there would be no raises for any employee during 2014. As a digital design engineer he could make more money someplace else, but he’s relatively happy where he is, so he stays. Started with the company September 10, 2001.
A lot of the comments here will be totally invalid in 5-10 years. Companies don’t want permanent employees. They want temps, contractors, etc to do a specific piece of work then leave.
The old rule of thumb was that you should stay with your new company twice as long as you were at your old company.
Both times I took a hefty pay cut to make the change... but more than caught back up after a few years with my new employer.
So, I think performance has a lot to do with it.
That is in a growing economy, and applies most to people in the very earliest part of their career.
For established workers in a contracting economy, keeping your job is task #1.
Not true at the place where I’m in my 36th year.
Last place I worked at,we got no raises at all for about the last 10 yrs.
After reading all the comments, I’m extra glad that I’m not in the rat race anymore.
Retired in 1999 and have loved every minute of it.