What "I Need A New Job" Really Means..
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I've had a mix. I've had most of my full time permanent employee jobs last 2-3 years. My Video production/Live Sound stuff for about 10 yrs. Then lots of other stuff, temp contract jobs for 1-3 months here and there. Did two Fast Food jobs for 2months each. Did some commission sales for 2yrs.
Sadly, the contract/temp stuff I have to take off my resume most of the time, it scares employers away. And then even the only 2-3yrs at most of my IT jobs has scared some away, heck even one of them that @scottalanmiller knows turned me down for a job because of the only 2-3yr stay. They said they wanted someone who had worked the same place for more like 7yrs, even if they didn't have that long actually in IT. They did say, they would consider hiring me as a janitor or something and after I get 4 yrs in with them plus get a masters degree they'd consider letting me do more with IT, before that I would only be allowed to plug in mice & keyboards, etc. no actual IT work. They currently don't have any IT staff besides the manager (who has no previous experience) and they contract out IT.
It seems like while the norm is 1-2 years even a bit longer than that hurts you in getting more jobs, and the temp contract stuff really hurts you. Which is bad, considering at least I've found most places, the only way to progress your career is to leave for a new job.
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It's really tough because a lot of places will count it against you if you don't last two years or more. But I've been almost turned down because I was at a place for eight years and they were concerned about people who had settled.
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When hiring practices are so poor, there is no reliable path to winning.
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In my thoughts contractors are people who have to pay the entire FICA amount and don't get things like medical benefits and paid vacation. Example: Scott does contractor work for NTG's clients.
An employee is someone who the company pays the second half (employer portion) of FICA, and often the employees get things like paid time off and medical benefits.
Contractors also don't typically get overtime for working more than 40 hours in a work week, non-exempt employees always do.
Contractors usually have a definitive start and end date (though I know many companies live and die by contractors, so there is no end date). Employees, while they might have a start/end date, this is not the norm.
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@Dashrender said:
In my thoughts contractors are people who have to pay the entire FICA amount and don't get things like medical benefits and paid vacation. Example: Scott does contractor work for NTG's clients.
That's usually called a 1099 worker or independent contractor.. Not just a contractor.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
In my thoughts contractors are people who have to pay the entire FICA amount and don't get things like medical benefits and paid vacation. Example: Scott does contractor work for NTG's clients.
That's usually called a 1099 worker or independent contractor.. Not just a contractor.
That's the only way I've ever used the term contractor in the context of my own employment status.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Dashrender said:
In my thoughts contractors are people who have to pay the entire FICA amount and don't get things like medical benefits and paid vacation. Example: Scott does contractor work for NTG's clients.
That's usually called a 1099 worker or independent contractor.. Not just a contractor.
If we're going to bring out all the possible 'contractors' well then we've completely derailed and the discussion is moot.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Not sure I know many people topping two years someplace anymore.
Blimey. Either things are very different in the US or we move in very different circles as I'd say the majority of my friends have been in their jobs for over two years.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Not sure I know many people topping two years someplace anymore.
Blimey. Either things are very different in the US or we move in very different circles as I'd say the majority of my friends have been in their jobs for over two years.
Many people in the US don't even stay for 3-5 months. Which is sad but true.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Not sure I know many people topping two years someplace anymore.
@Carnival-Boy said:
Blimey. Either things are very different in the US or we move in very different circles as I'd say the majority of my friends have been in their jobs for over two years.
@thecreativeone91 said:
Many people in the US don't even stay for 3-5 months. Which is sad but true.
There are many, many that do. In IT I think there is a tendency to shorter stays than other places.
That said, I am in year 7 of employment where I am. But I feel as a consultant that I get a wide range of experience in various things and stay fresh due to the varied clients.
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@JaredBusch For IT my experience and what I've read elsewhere agrees - usual job term is 1 to 3 years
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@MattSpeller said:
@JaredBusch For IT my experience and what I've read elsewhere agrees - usual job term is 1 to 3 years
Yeah thats what my Full Time Jobs have been.
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It depends on the nature of job. I work in ERP, and these projects tend to last several years so I'd struggle to be productive if I kept moving jobs every 2 years.
But as a general rule, I've always thought 5 years is the ideal length of service regardless of the job (IT Support, President of the United States, Football Coach). It takes a couple of years to settle in and get to know the job, then you have a couple of years where you're really productive, and after that you run out of ideas or slack off and it's time to let a new guy have a go.
I've definitely been in my current job too long, but in my defence, the state of the UK economy since 2008 has been poor so staying at a company that is profitable and secure wasn't necessarily a bad move.
The problem with working in IT for an SMB is there is nowhere to go - the only promotion I could get is to CEO and that's never going to happen, so I'm stuck in my current role. If I worked for HP or Ford I could stay there my whole life and get promoted to new positions every few years.
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I love this quote from Greg Smith:
"Sometimes, when you have been in an organisation a long time, it starts to feel like a student party in the small hours of the morning. All the decent booze has gone, all the interesting people have left or copped off and you suddenly realise that you should have gone home hours ago. At that point, you start to amplify your organisation’s faults and play down its good points; the exact opposite of what you did when you first arrived."
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I love this quote from Greg Smith:
"Sometimes, when you have been in an organisation a long time, it starts to feel like a student party in the small hours of the morning. All the decent booze has gone, all the interesting people have left or copped off and you suddenly realise that you should have gone home hours ago. At that point, you start to amplify your organisation’s faults and play down its good points; the exact opposite of what you did when you first arrived."
Excellent
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It depends on the nature of job. I work in ERP, and these projects tend to last several years so I'd struggle to be productive if I kept moving jobs every 2 years.
Outside of call center helpdesk I think few IT jobs can be productive moving too quickly. In the enterprise space, it often takes months to get people trained and often to even get them system access!
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@Carnival-Boy said:
But as a general rule, I've always thought 5 years is the ideal length of service regardless of the job (IT Support, President of the United States, Football Coach). It takes a couple of years to settle in and get to know the job, then you have a couple of years where you're really productive, and after that you run out of ideas or slack off and it's time to let a new guy have a go.
I did eight years at a job recently and it mostly worked because of there being three major "stages" of my career there so it was a little like having done one job for two years, another for two and another for four - all while in the same firm. But definitely by eight years, things were getting stale and that's why I left when I did. It was time to move on. Good place, but too much of the same thing.
Some firms are designed for people to be around a long time, they are like families, others are more like jobs and not designed to be a permanent thing and those you really need to move on from.
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@scottalanmiller I am a victim of this at the moment... I have been at my new job for coming up on a year. I still don't have access to the VMware console to take care of my VMs, nor do I have keys to the server room where the physical machines I am responsible for live.
I don't have even read only access to AD, while I have to manage a VDI deployment and RemoteApps.
I get that you don't give a stranger the keys to the kingdom on his first day -- especially in a large-ish IT department...but after a year, t hey should realize I'm only a little crazy and won't go breaking things on purpose...
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Not sure I know many people topping two years someplace anymore.
Blimey. Either things are very different in the US or we move in very different circles as I'd say the majority of my friends have been in their jobs for over two years.
In the SMB things are very short. And in the hedge fund I was at recently, the whole place was under a year and a half and friends there tell me that everyone has turned over (or just left) since I left six months ago. The turnover rate went from nuts to total insanity.
When I was there and things were considered "stable", the average stay across the whole companies was super short, like 18 months or something. Partially because they had a massive turnover at 3-6 months with something like 50% of hires leaving in that time. If you passed that barrier, then you'd likely stay 2-3 years at least.
So you have to remember that most firms have a big pool of people who leave in less than a year because they figure out that they can't do the role or don't like the company or just don't fit well or whatever - then the people who fit tend to stay a few years at least. That high turnover for people who don't fit make the attrition rate seem alarming more than it really is.
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@scottalanmiller said:
So you have to remember that most firms have a big pool of people who leave in less than a year because they figure out that they can't do the role or don't like the company or just don't fit well or whatever - then the people who fit tend to stay a few years at least. That high turnover for people who don't fit make the attrition rate seem alarming more than it really is.
So you're saying the difference is that my friends are mostly good at their jobs and your friends are mostly useless? That makes sense
