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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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

2 years? It used to be 3 years. It's one way to get constant raises, as a company is unlikely to keep up with your value otherwise. That said, "unlikely" is the key word there. I've been lucky in finding companies that kept up with that value, at least until I fell out of favor with management. And at some point you're basically topped out anyhow unless you want to deal with FAANG-like stress. And I don't.

But yes, if you're being undervalued, you should look at changing jobs and fixing that.