Know Thyself

Should I be trying this hard to find a place where I'm optimal, where most of what I can do is used to effect and solves multiple problems for my employer? Or, at its heart, is work simply to be effort expended and paycheck received?

Am I looking for the wrong things in work, when I look for intensity, purpose, growth, and the triumph of successes?

Am I deluded in thinking that if I find a position that uses every bit of what I can give, that the automatic beneficiary will the employer and growth and advancement naturally follow usefulness?

Idealists applaud this thinking. Most of my friends who've worked for any length of time don't. We are bombarded every day with a culture that advises us to look for more in everything we do. Is that reasonable with jobs when we have other commitments those jobs must support? Is this wanting more just the product of a fickle and never-satisfied culturing? Or is it the necessary and reasonable outlook of someone who can ultimately do more?

It is appropriate and wise to ask these questions of yourself. I am at least convinced that life shouldn't be run on an autopilot. If you leave or if you stay at a place, it must be carefully considered and deliberate.

Having been highly effective, hitting my stride in a number of places, it becomes hard to settle for less.

Your inconsistency ought to show consistency. At the simplest level, your next employer needs to believe that his potential investment (lower income now for long-term expectation of gain) will be realized. Even if there is no direct training, your coming up to speed costs money in work not done as efficiently as needed. If you've not stayed long at other places, that's fine, so long as the next employer has every expectation that you stay long enough to make it worth his investment. It is on the applicant to demonstrate this. The employer has every reason to inquire critically as to why some positions were unusually short.

If you can convince an employer that your short stays there actually benefit him here, more the better. This is not far-fetched. Changing jobs more often than the average, you can accumulate a lot of skills very quickly and bring knowledge of multiple environments to your new employer. If 70% of your mastery of the position comes in your first year, 25% your second, 5% your third, then leaving after one or two years nets you much of the skillset, and your next position you're learning 70% again instead of 5%. You may not become an expert in one area, not having seen every permutation of the problem, but you will have a solid grasp on a number of areas instead.

I used to be rather pleased with myself, being able to say I never had a job I didn't like and being positioned to leave if I stopped learning. It was a lesson I internalized from my first, longest position, where I realize I should have left sooner than I did, rather than allow frustration and stasis to set in as I transitioned from building to maintaining. But attempt to change positions enough times and you will eventually find work or companies you don't like. The more changes that accumulate, the more you reasonably consider whether you're in fact the heart of the problem. And if you're not the problem, you will find yourself now needing to remind and justify yourself in this. A few too many changes and an unqualified mantra of "change often" no longer feels self-evident.

I've not suffered, mind you. I've grown immensely. But it yields soul-searching questions. I have read a lot of articles on Millennials and job-hopping. Because if you're reading about someone job-hopping, it's usually about a Millennial. I'm not one, by most definitions, being born 2+ years too early. I'm the tail of GenX apparently, but the generalizations seem to apply to me  as does the logic presented in a number of more profound descriptions of what Millennials are looking for.

There is the possibility that Millennials may not be hopping at so unusual a rate, given their age, as previous generations. And I was relieved to see writing that confirmed my feeling that many job-hoppers (like myself) long for a place of permanence where they are effective, productive and growing. Apparently, they might be even be conservative in their activity. What separates me from those who stay is the acknowledgement of otherwise missed opportunities that are worth following. What fails to hinder me is some resignation that perhaps the permanent fits our parents had are no longer possible. I think I'd like to find I'm pleasantly wrong someday. Simply put, I've left places, hoping to find a new spot where I am unlikely to want to hop. I may switch to prepare myself for such a place. This represents a certain vague wish that both such a place exists and that I will be appropriate for and accepted into it once found. It's not all naïveté. Whether or not that permanent place exists, I'm bringing value to those employers who can use me.

The workplace and worker has changed. There is job-hopping: leaving the current adequate workplace as soon as another company offers marginally more attractive incentives (the bigger better deal). And then there is job-hopping, in not feeling overly constrained to stay with a company where the work or incentives offered are significantly poorer than the available alternatives in the name of some arbitrary sense of personal duty or one-sided loyalty. Recognizing “I work for my family” as the ultimate priority goes a long way to reduce any guilt associated with leaving.

The question that is left unanswered until a long-term hire occurs is do I leave so often because there are few jobs capable of providing long term challenge? (a failure of the work or company) or do I leave so often because I am not looking long enough or hard enough for the right challenges? (a failure of my own job search).

Do I really know myself and the kind of role I should be targeting? What can separate the itinerant employee who has zero real interest in the company from a strong engineer may be this introspection: that if the question is finally answered he'll find the role for which he is optimally suited and highly effective.