- Posts tagged career
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Link: Why Job Hoppers Make the Best Employees
It takes a good deal of self-knowledge to know what you want to do next, and to choose to go get it rather than stay someplace that for the moment seems safe. It takes commitment to personal growth to give up career complacency and embrace a challenging learning curve throughout your career — over and over.
Early in my career -- if you can call it a career in the conventional sense -- my parents were Freaking Out. I would take a job, do it for 6-9 months, quit, take a new one, do it for a year, quit, and so forth. They figured this was a recipe for disaster. I just got bored with the jobs or found better opportunities to learn new things.
My father started his career in the work-30-years-for-the-same-company era. But he gave that up after 18 years with one company in order to make more money. But he timed it badly -- at the opening of the 1980s -- and suffered a series of career setbacks as corporate downsizing reverberated through the economy for years. The notion of a 30-year career was destroyed during those years.
I watched my father go through that and learned a lesson: No company can be trusted. And my career has borne out that notion.
My mother sent me the article linked above because it surprised her, but she recognized me in the post and wanted to share. It's a great post. For those out there that want to know the difference between taking a job and making a career, this is it.
Longest job I've ever had: about 3.8 years. Longest I've been with any one company: about 4.5 years.
And I've known about my need for interesting, challenging work for years. I've gone to more than one boss and said "Please keep me around longer. Give me something new to learn and do." I think they didn't believe me. Until after I left.
