The original source of VC BS in this instance, one Mark Suster, defined a job-hopper as somebody who's had "5 jobs of 2 years or less each." I've worked for more than 30 different companies, not counting my freelance production artist work in Chicago before I discovered programming. Suster reminds me of those crazy fundamentalist preachers in the desert -istan countries who call women sluts because they wear clothes that make their ankles visible. By his standards, I'm the Whore of Babylon.
Before I go into why I think Suster's argument is worthless, let me pause to give it some fair consideration. First of all, his argument is mostly a tautology: you shouldn't hire job-hoppers, because they might job-hop. It's hard to argue with a tautology.
It is soul-destroying to have to train “yet another head of QA.” It is bad on team morale when good people quit. The people who stay are often with you. But sometimes it weakens their own resolve. Especially when this job-hopper has them out for drinks to talk about his cool new gig where the grass is currently greener.
Obviously, the thing that makes it hard to argue with tautologies is that they're true. I've job-hopped like crazy, and let me tell you, if a job sucked, yes, I would quit. I once went through this ridiculous telephone interview for a job at a science lab in New Mexico. After 45 minutes of an absolutely grueling alpha geek beatdown, they asked me about my job-hopping. They asked me what was to stop me from going back to California. I told them nothing, and that I was headed to California next month to go camping; although I didn't actually say it, I think they could also tell that I wasn't that interested in the job, and that I had only stuck through the alpha geek beatdown because it was more interesting than watching TV. I didn't get the job.
This brings me to probably the only useful thing I can say about job-hopping: if you're job-hopping, you are over-qualified. One of the things that annoyed me about writing code for large corporations was the cliché of seeing a badly designed web site and hearing that it was "designed by a developer." It annoyed me because I'd worked in graphic design and never found it hard. So I'd be having people tell me, oooooh, you have to get it to the designer to get it done right, and I'd be all, whatever, I'll just hammer it out, the designer's way too busy and he went to lunch 10 minutes ago anyway. And I'd get these looks of shock and awe, like, ZOMG YOU CAN USE PHOTOSHOP?!?!1
yes, I can use Photoshop, but I prefer gouache
Sorry, tangent. Point is, a job-hopper is like Larry King. Larry King's about to have his 8th divorce. He has all these women asking him to marry them, he marries them, it doesn't work out, he moves on to the next one. I don't know Larry King and I wish him the best, but to me, it sure looks like every time he gets married, he's settling. If that wasn't the way it was, he would have fought to keep at least one of those marriages intact. And that's kinda what's going on if you're a job-hopper. It means the companies want you bad, but you could care less about the companies. I hate to side with the VCs here, but if they want you more than you want them, maybe it means you need to aim higher.
Of course I can't fully side with the VCs, and nobody who knows this blog would expect me to. Here's Paul Dix, attacking Suster's assertion that you can't trust a job-hopper, because with a job-hopper, "you're in it for yourself more than the company."
"You're in it for yourself more than the company"?! That's exactly what I expect of everyone I work with. They have families to feed, student loans to pay, rent to pay, and they have to be worried about whether their continued employment at the company will benefit their overall career. Everyone is in it for themselves. That's capitalism.
Somebody who calls himself Angry Asian made a similar response:
There is nothing wrong with putting your monetary future first. I find it very unsettling for people with millions in the bank to tell others not to go out and find the best deal.
What's going on here is a double standard combined with bad listening. To be fair to Suster, he never said it was a bad idea to be a job-hopper. He just said he wouldn't hire one. What he's saying is that you want to hire people who value loyalty to the company over their own practical interests.
For perspective, here's a passage on being loyal to companies, from How To Get Rich, by Felix Dennis, whose estimated net worth exceeds a billion dollars:
Team spirit is for losers, financially speaking. It's the glue that binds the losers together. It's the methodology employers use to shackle useful employees to their desks without having to pay them too much. While lives may depend on it in a few professions, like soldiering or firefighting, in commerce it acts as a subtle handicap and a brake to ambitious individuals. Which, in a way, is what it's designed to do.
Dennis goes on to praise an employee who bailed on him - Neil Tennant, who left a terrific job working for Dennis to start a pop group called The Pet Shop Boys, which made him a rich and famous international star.
I bring up the praise element because Dennis does not share Suster's attitude that you should hire people who place your interests ahead of theirs. He says so elsewhere in his book.
Outsiders are sometimes surprised at my reaction when people decide to leave one of my own companies and set up on their own. I always wish them well. Not only outwardly, but in my heart, too. Often I throw a party for them. Or write glowing testimonials. Once or twice I have even underwritten their office lease or introduced them to a banker of lawyer I trust.
Actually, I couldn't find it - sorry, but I don't have all day - but he says, in the vicinity of this passage, that the people who bail to start their own companies are the best employees and the ones you should look for.
This is why I think Suster's argument is worthless: the double standard he recommends using against your people is not one that Felix Dennis endorses. When two people disagree about business, and one of them is a millionaire, but the other is a billionaire, the mere millionaire should shut the fuck up and listen. I think there are a lot of other reasons to disregard Suster's opinion - it's unethical, it's slimy, it represents a terrible attitude towards other human beings, and Jason Calacanis agrees with it - but here he is, a venture capitalist, and the bootstrap billionaire doesn't even agree with him. There's no point attacking him on any other point, when he fails on his own ground.
Update:
sd.rb
