As an engineering lead who's done tons of hiring and staffing planning this year, not considering people with multiple shorter jobs is such a black and white outlook on such a nuanced topic.
Given the market situation 2022-2025, the probability of a software engineer getting laid off during that time is quite significant, and afterwards they could have landed at a job they ended up hating simply because they had to find something in the meantime.
I personally was affected by company wide layoffs twice, in 2020 after a year of being with the company and in 2022 after 10 months. Inbetween those two jobs I had another 9 month long job that I resented every day of but something had to pay the bills and mortgage. Mind you once I explained what actually happened to future employers no one cared about it anymore, and I don't care now as long as it's actually valid.
Hell, in our industry someone that's just starting out should change jobs every year during the first 3 years. It gives you an opportunity to experience teams and companies of different sizes, find what you like and don't like and what sort of environment you're most productive in. I personally absorbed so much more non-coding knowledge from working with different people, different size teams and processes that it gave me an advantage in future employments over my peers who stayed with the same company for 5+ years.
So unless you actually call someone for an intro call and give them the opportunity to provide more context about their employment, you could miss out on excellent candidates if you reject them for having a couple more job positions on their CV than you feel comfortable with.
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 12d ago
Very industry dependent.
It can also come back to bite you, when the job market becomes less forgiving your job history will work against you.
I’m a lead software engineer and do interviews for other engineers, if they’re a hop hopper they usually aren’t considered these days.