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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

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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?

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[–] kersplort@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Job hopping at a fixed time is silly. Don't leave a situation where you're growing, getting new opportunities and doing interesting work because generalized advice on the internet told you to. Leave when you're not happy, not growing, and not getting paid what you're worth.

The timing right now isn't great either - the market is flooded with recent layoffs, and companies are trying to pick them up at a discount.