Quit Every Three Years
Let’s get this out of the way, there is no such thing as loyalty from your company, there is no climbing the corporate ladder. That position above you that just opened up is not for you, it is for an outsider, you will not be promoted. Companies do not invest in their staff no matter what the HR propaganda tells you.
It’s good for you and the company
After about two years you know everything you need to about your company, and they know everything about you BUT your value is decreasing from the day you start. Hiring outsiders brings in fresh perspective, sometimes from competitors to get an advantage as well. The two year mark starts a countdown clock, honestly, I think two years is as long as you should be anyplace that is not a FAANG enterprise.
Tech skills don’t age well
Moving around gets you the opportunity to stay relevant. Maintaining a legacy system is bad, you don’t need to be told that, but the more people come through, the higher the probability they will change it. For you that is bad news because you won’t be trained up, they’ll hire new blood.
Train up becomes manage out
Companies treat you worse and worse as time goes on. If they don’t think you have options, they have no incentive to treat your career aspirations as a priority. They’ll add a breakroom with cookies and coffee, maybe a token HR event.
After a point when they have a “come to Jesus” moment and know to get to the next level a lot of their staff are deadweight, your out on your ass.
HR is poised to know when to turnover staff
HR places an expiration on your head. It is a guideline more than a date, but they know when to roll over the skilled people that get upset when the company will not invest in staying relevant. The most passionate and talented people are the first to go.
I’ve been “managed out” for telling companies how out of date they are, and the people that replaced me, basically all picked up from what I roadmapped out. The people that stayed were so old and useless, but they knew where the legacy things were. As soon as the update comes, they are out and the process repeats.
Developers are their own worst enemy
I like being an engineer, but I HATE MY FELLOW ENGINEERS. Constantly creating increasingly complex JavaScript or Node crap doesn’t help, it only hurts everyone else. Sitting around with VS Code running unit tests to measure your dicks is too toxic, what are you proving?
This kind of FOMO and being a jerk to be bleeding edge is forcing a lot of people to avoid hiring younger kids. See how this also helps add to legacy grust?
Ambition will get you fired/Nobody respects internal experience
Trust me, as I alluded to above, if you start making suggestions, even from a good place of loyalty, you are only a pain in their ass until they see the light, and that’ll be after you are gone. This is something that you see time and time again, it reinforces that promotion is not for the guy that roadmaps a clear future, it means they want to bring in someone that has done it. this is a bullshit “velocity” argument where bringing someone with experience in will make it go faster than training and in