Is the old advice to change companies every two-ish years still the best practice for career advancement? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by ELLIOTTCABLE@beehaw.org to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I recall a regular piece of advice for software engineers: “change your job every two years.”

There’s innumerable Google results for this, even from as recently as 2022 — but none of them really seem that high-quality?

I’m really, really enjoying my current (somewhat unusual, hard-to-replicate) position; am about a year and a half into it; but I also don’t want to relax into that and have it cost me in the long-run, career advancement wise.

So, what’ve y’all been doing? Especially in the post-pandemic/fully-remote world, does that advice still apply?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] jim@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

I think it's good advice to keep your options open and look around to see if there's any good opportunities every year. It's good to keep your ear to the ground, even if it's just networking or browsing through openings and talking to recruiters. But no, you don't have to change jobs every X number of years.

this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023

46 points (96.0% liked)

Experienced Devs

3978 readers

1 users here now

A community for discussion amongst professional software developers.

Posts should be relevant to those well into their careers.

For those looking to break into the industry, are hustling for their first job, or have just started their career and are looking for advice, check out:

Logo base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

jmk1ng@programming.dev

drewsiferr@programming.dev