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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 2 years ago by ELLIOTTCABLE@beehaw.org to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev

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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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[–] SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I feel like you should be careful trying to just optimize for the most money.

2 years seems really short, like your boss would just finally have you producing good code and knowing all the specific pitfalls of a certain codebase and then the door slams shut behind you.

I come from a different culture, but I've found 4 years is the right cadence for me. If you're keeping your nose to the grindstone and doing what you're supposed to, it seems like about every 4 years everything ends up changing.

Doesn't even mean leaving. Often it means advancement.