Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less ( www.forbes.com )

Zachariah , 24 days ago

This article is more than 9 years old.

sabreW4K3 , 24 days ago

And still nothing has changed

JoMiran , 24 days ago

My wife and I skyrocketed in our careers. How? Between 1997 and 2008 we did exactly the opposite of what our parents recommended and kept hopping jobs. My longest stint at any one place was 18 months and hers was two years. When we realized that our skill sets were too expensive and rare to waste at a single project, we started our own consulting firm and continue to cycle through projects regularly.

Remember, whether you are self-employed or employed by someone else, you ultimately work for yourself. Act accordingly and guard your self-interests.

sabreW4K3 , 24 days ago

Great advice.

stufkes , 24 days ago

But it's also in one's self interest to have a stable relationship with colleagues, being used to an environment, not changing things drastically so frequently.

There is a big, non-monetary cost to job hopping. If life outside of work is not stable, than changing the one constant is suddenly not appealing, even if more money is the reward.

JoMiran , 24 days ago

I found that to be the opposite. All of our clients have come to us via word of mouth and all of our initial clients were referrals from past colleagues. Because we jumped around so much we ended up with a very large network of ex colleagues that came to us for help once they knew we were available. As. those colleagues also switched jobs they knew to call us if they needed our help in their new place of employment.

They key is not to stay at one place for a long time but to make an impact during the time you spend there.

Aviandelight , 24 days ago

This reminds me of Joan in Mad Men where she takes her Rolodex with her when she leaves the company.

JoMiran , 24 days ago

It's your Rolodex/LinkedIn, not the company's. Also, the relationship between company and employee doesn't have to be adversarial. A lot of people, and companies forget that.

Womble , 23 days ago

It doesnt have to be adversarial, but if either party decideds to make it so, it is. For larger companies in particular its pretty much institutionalised to be adverserial from day one.

stufkes , 24 days ago

I appreciate that it worked for you. I don't want to invalidate your experience. I just want to say that there is a good reason such a large gap exists between the evidence that job hopping is beneficial, and people actually doing it.

I want to point out that a) you have a skillset and job area that is conducive to freelancing and b) that building a network requires networking, which again is something that costs energy and social and communication skills.

These are not a given and should not be treated as a no-cost activity. Especially your last sentence implies a required focus on impact- again, your reward is more money, but there is a cost to doing this at work.

cyborganism , 24 days ago

It still applies today.

herrcaptain , 24 days ago

Yeah, I did a double-take when I got to the part about expected wage increases for 2014. I suspect it's much worse now, and was interested to see what Forbes was printing about that as at least these days they're notorious for posting stuff with an anti-labour focus. I can't imagine they'd post an article like this these days.

That said, I'm sure this article is more relevant than ever now and it's a damn travesty that this is what the labour market has come to since the 70s/80s.

I'm on the executive team for a small business that my family bought almost two years ago. Many of us had worked there for years beforehand and absolutely weren't paid what we were worth. As soon as we took over, we started to raise wages across the board (other than sales, who are our own little 1% due to the structure we inherited). Wages are still far from where we'd like them to be, but we're trying our best with the resources at hand while we navigate these first few years of ownership. Shit's not easy for a lot of small businesses and I get that many small business owners are outright taking advantage of their staff. We actively try not to (granted, in the Marxist sense we inherently are) but I realize that most of our staff deserve more than we can currently afford to pay them.