Is joining a new company every 2 years to increase ones salary workable?
It seems conventional wisdom is to jump ship every few years or so to increase one’s salary. But how is this sustainable? Why do companies focus on paying new hires more than paying their own, existing bootstrapped, and productive employees? Doesn’t this churn hurt engineering teams and lead to brain drains? Is this a myth and doing so is not actually the best way to increase one’s salary?
The thing I find funny is that the resume of a fuck-up and a wunderkind look quite similar to me - short stints at a variety of places. I do think the 2-3 years is probably key there - a string of less than 2 year (and especially less than 1 year) positions is a big red flag to me having worked with people like that.
It’s worked for me. 2-4 year stints, and my salary has increased about 8x over 20 years.