Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video
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It is common "wisdom" bestowed upon us from other careers that job loyalty is more important than moving up. Of course, employers want you to believe that, but is it really true? How does job hopping affect IT careers?
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What is the incentive for an employer to put any type of training or professional development into an employee if they are going to use that training to work for another company?
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
What is the incentive for an employer to put any type of training or professional development into an employee if they are going to use that training to work for another company?
What's their incentive to do it now? Why is it up to an employer to educate employees? What good does it do an employee to get educated only for the needs of a single employer so that they don't become more valuable in the market?
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Reverse the question - what is the incentive of an employee to become more valuable if they are trapped at a single employer that doesn't have a complete career path for them to advance through?
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This is interesting. I have heard, recently, that hopping jobs is the way to increase your salary more and more. I like the company I work for because I am the one in charge of IT. I have a great boss that knows I know what I am doing and he doesn't. Since I have proven myself, he just lets me do what I need to do. I have grown tremendously during my 7 years here. I have almost completely virtualized this place and gotten a lot of things automated and created efficiencies in several other areas. However, I would love to move out of CA. If I can keep working for them and live out of state, I would do it tomorrow.
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@scottalanmiller The incentive would be to develop the employee so they can move up in the company and make more money. I'm willing to pay my employee's more if they bring more to the table and make me more money.
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller The incentive would be to develop the employee so they can move up in the company and make more money. I'm willing to pay my employee's more if they bring more to the table and make me more money.
This doesn't work in 90% of companies. More skills aren't more valuable. Teaching your Windows people Linux or Networking skills does the normal company no good. The rare Fortune 100 is large enough to have an upwards career path. And Service Providers are outside of the normal system because essentially IT people job hop day to day. Outside of service providers and the Fortune 100, essentially no company has enough IT positions in granulatity to allow for education to move someone up the ladder. The steps immediately above most positions are lacking and the only means for someone to advance is to move to another company.
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller The incentive would be to develop the employee so they can move up in the company and make more money. I'm willing to pay my employee's more if they bring more to the table and make me more money.
Keep in mind that IT isn't a profit center. So more skills don't equate to more money. Why would a company want employees to move up if they have to pay for them to be able to move up? Companies, logically, want people to not advance, because they are cheaper with fewer marketable skills. They only want the employees to have the skills useful to them, not useful to their competition. It's not just business sensible to want to train people for jobs, skills and career paths that you don't have, don't plan to have or don't need to fill.
In the Fortune 100, IT is often so huge that you can actually spend a career moving around inside the company. But even the biggest companies often want their star people to leave and maybe return some day, because it keeps them from stagnating from internal politics. That's why the big banks share staff and don't focus on retention within a single bank. Too much "keeping people in IT throughout their careers" leads to some really weird results.
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@scottalanmiller I'm new at being a boss. I doubled my staff 2.5 weeks ago. I hired my first full time employee. A person who doesn't have a ton of experience but is very intelligent, learns fast, is a hard worker, is great with clients and cares about my customers. I'm willing to develop her skills and as that happens I am happy to pay her more.
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Providing incentives for people to learn and grow in their careers is definitely something I look for. I don't really have a move up, here, as I am already at the top. I am still learning here because the company is growing at a decent clip. If I plateaued, both in income and level of interest (lack or projects), I would definitely be looking to move on.
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller I'm new at being a boss. I doubled my staff 2.5 weeks ago. I hired my first full time employee. A person who doesn't have a ton of experience but is very intelligent, learns fast, is a hard worker, is great with clients and cares about my customers. I'm willing to develop her skills and as that happens I am happy to pay her more.
But you are a service provider. Would you want to pay her more if she keeps learning things that you pay for her to learn, but you cannot sell? Do you want to tie her compensation to something other than her value to your company?
And why would you pay, to make her ready to be paid more if she doesn't make you more?
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@wrx7m said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
Providing incentives for people to learn and grow in their careers is definitely something I look for. I don't really have a move up, here, as I am already at the top. I am still learning here because the company is growing at a decent clip. If I plateaued, both in income and level of interest (lack or projects), I would definitely be looking to move on.
Outside of the F100, it is common to plateau at many points in a career because the company doesn't have another level to move someone into. There aren't enough position "tiers" to allow for such granularity.
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Also, study after study shows that the #1 reason people quit is job satisfaction. I don't believe I.T. is an exception. I think an employee who feels valued will stay at an employer longer than one who doesn't feel appreciated.
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
Also, study after study shows that the #1 reason people quit is job satisfaction. I don't believe I.T. is an exception. I think an employee who feels valued will stay at an employer longer than one who doesn't feel appreciated.
I agree with this. This is the first job I have had where 99% of the time I don't dread coming into work everyday.
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
Also, study after study shows that the #1 reason people quit is job satisfaction. I don't believe I.T. is an exception. I think an employee who feels valued will stay at an employer longer than one who doesn't feel appreciated.
Sure, but those that aren't valuable also tend to stay a long time. Is taking classes or getting cert training directly tied to job satisfaction? Why? Not that it is a bad thing, but what makes it particularly good? And long term employee retention is rarely beneficial to company or employee. Doing well by your staff is great, but long term retention is rarely the best thing for anyone. Sometimes, but not often.
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@scottalanmiller Why couldn't I sell the services that a highly trained employee has?
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller Why couldn't I sell the services that a highly trained employee has?
So again, we are back to you being a service provider so to whom will you sell these skills? New customers? That's job hopping. See my point?
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@scottalanmiller said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller Why couldn't I sell the services that a highly trained employee has?
So again, we are back to you being a service provider so to whom will you sell these skills? New customers? That's job hopping. See my point?
Not at all... I can expand services and reach markets I am not reaching now because I don't have the assets to handle those jobs.
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There are cases, with a service provider, where learning a small, new skill might result in a small, incremental sales bonus. But this is extremely rare. Think about existing MSP customers, think about an MSP "learning a small new skill", how does that interaction work? Do you raise their rates because you now know a little bit more than before? Do you base their rates off of incremental updates to a single employee? How do you handle when they work with other employees? Do you just get more work that was incrementally going to other providers?
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@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@ccwtech said in Should You Job Hop for Your Career in IT - SAMIT Video:
@scottalanmiller Why couldn't I sell the services that a highly trained employee has?
So again, we are back to you being a service provider so to whom will you sell these skills? New customers? That's job hopping. See my point?
Not at all... I can expand services and reach markets I am not reaching now because I don't have the assets to handle those jobs.
No, exactly, you just described job hobbing. New companies in new markets.
