Why job hopping is not a great idea: The benefits of staying put

There is a lot of advice on the internet on why one must job-hop to progress.

The logic is obvious.

Why would the company pay more for you if they already have you?

The other company - they don't have you. They are incentivized to pay you more to get your talent.

This is true.

Changing jobs can be a viable strategy to increase your salary.

But today I want to meditate on something people don't talk to much - the benefits of staying put.

Here are some thoughts on the matter.

1. Deepening Mastery

Staying on one job leads to Mastery.

If you stay in one company, it will give you a deeper understanding of the business.

You simply will have more time to understand how the different elements of the business come together and how they work holistically as a system.

Plus, long-term employees get access to advanced training and development opportunities which might not be available to those who are jumping from one place to another.

Executives don't reward loyalty. They incentivize longevity.

The longer you're staying in the company, the higher is the ROI (return on investment) for the business because ultimately you're becoming not only an expert in your craft but also an expert in the business and at some point potentially you are getting to the level where you're able to replicate your talent and skill set and scale yourself out of your role. This is the goal.

The greatest workers are force multipliers. People who step into the role, get to the highest level possible and then scale themselves out of the operations.

If they become obsolete, it's fine by them. But what happens naturally is that the business finds another business problem for them to work on. By making themselves redundant they are making themselves indispensable.

This is only possible if the tenure is long.

2. Building Trust

Building trust is one of the most important thing that come out of the long-term commitment.

And why is that important?

Trust enables you to deliver your best work.

When you have the highest trust in relationships with your business partners and stakeholders you are free to create and problem solve the way it makes sense to you. There is no micromanagement. Full autonomy and ownership.

For example, this is how Senior Tech Leadership operates at the highest level within SaaS organization. There is a Strategy that is in place set by the CTO and CISO, but the Tech Leads have full freedom and autonomy to make department specific decisions. That ownership mentality is what is solving the problems in the real world.

So practically, high levels of trust enable you as a professional to excel at your work. And this is not an obvious pattern, but something that definitely one might be mindful of.

The stronger your relationships within the team and the business, the higher will be the outputs from the collaboration that you are creating.

3. Career Growth

Career growth will accelerate with long tenure. And please understand that when I say career growth, it's not only about the paycheque.

Yes, as I mentioned before, the leadership team will incentivize you so that you stay in the business longer and generate maximum return on investments.

So promotions and pay raises, and all that jazz are coming from the longer tenure, but career growth is about career development - it is a process in which you get opportunities to work on interesting projects, solve complex problems, get exposure to things that wouldn't be available otherwise.

Rare opportunities are reserved normally for trusted and experienced employees as retention mechanisms. And those experiences can only be earned through consistent performance and reliability.

4. Organizational Knowledge and Influence

As you're progressing through the years within one organization, your institutional knowledge increases.

And that's the highest value for the business.

Understanding its history, its culture, its the inner mechanisms and workings of the company - this is what makes you dangerous.

That institutional knowledge becomes extremely valuable for the leadership team.

So over time, employees that maximize their institutional knowledge can influence strategic decisions and can contribute to the company's direction (e.g. a Principal Developer who creates the architecture that revolutionizes the way value is delivered to customers)

And that leads in turn to impact i.e. to more reputation-building opportunities.

Even if at some point you will decide to have a transition into another business, this impact and achievement is something you would want to showcase for your next employer.

Past performance is the best predictor of the future performance.

They will be looking for your stories. Impact is the only thing that matters to them.

• How much money you made for the business
• How much money you saved for the business
• How have you improved a process in a meaningful way

5. Job Satisfaction and Meaning

Reduced stress is one of the great things that you can get from staying put.

Job hunting is one of the most stressful experiences that can happen to you and stress is not great for aging, and definitely not great for focused life.

But if you're just staying in one job with security and stability, you can focus on your work and your personal growth.

Your job satisfaction will increase too.

Long-term employees also have a stronger sense of belonging to a community and alignment with the company's mission and values, which again leads to the greater job satisfaction.

You generate more meaning in your life by staying within one organization.

6. Financial Benefits

There could be different hidden perks for staying within an organization for longer periods of time from a financial perspective as well, for example - programs like RRSP.

This is basically free money.

The company is topping up your contribution and RRSP program is a powerful vehicle of wealth creation over the time.

I will reiterate: the business is incentivized to keep you.

As the business goes through different kinds of transformations, other different mechanisms of retention can be introduced, e.g. stock or equity or any kind of cash packages or perks.

While you have that stability you can have freedom with your passion projects, ideas, and side hustles (and give yourself raises on your own terms).

Job stability ensures a consistent income that gives you the foundation upon which you can build your additional income streams.

7. Reduced Transition Costs

If you change your job frequently, you will go through the same cycles and processes again.

Onboarding, offboarding, understanding the culture, training, and those are definitely time-consuming and disruptive for the business, but it is also time-consuming and disruptive for you personally.

And while you're spending your time on this, it comes with an opportunity cost.

Time spent on non-sensical motions that humans create is time not spent on things that matter to you the most in life.

Your energy that is invested into this kind of transition costs is not spent on the things that could be a better use of your time (e.g. building yourself, building a business, creating your legacy).

Long-term employees avoid these repeated dips in productivity.

Staying put means staying focused on your own OKRs in life.

Whatever it may be, skill development in your career, pursuing your hobbies or volunteering your time in service to the world.

8. Professional Reputation

Reputation is the ultimate currency.

By staying within one organization, you create a story. This story can reflect a stable career path as a reliable and dedicated professional who is staying for the long term and working on long term projects and contributing to impactful transformations within the organization.

That story is how you create the perception. People see what you train them to see. The world's perception of you is in your hands.

Plus, another thing that cannot be ignored is building the network.

First, you're definitely building a stronger network within the organization.

Second, you build a stronger network of alumni who decide to transition outside of organization throughout the years and go into other companies that will potentially open doors for you to explore.

As they go through their transitions, you can support them taking a note to stay in touch.

That in turn, leads to robust networks of referrals and recommendations.

Lastly, as you're building your reputation, that invisibly translates into different networking opportunities.

People will reach out to you if they see consistency and integrity.

You become a lead magnet by authoring and owning your story.

9. Personal Growth and Fulfillment

Something that's not super obvious, but staying put also translates into your personal development and work-life balance.

Personal development: for example, the business could enroll you into a mentorship program, a leadership training or a coaching program that is reserved only for key employees. (In my experience, as a coach and leadership development trainer, these internal programs can have limited capacity for enrolment).

From a work-life balance perspective, it is easier to achieve a work-life balance because as the time goes on, you become more familiar with the business, with the role, with the work environment, and your efficiency is naturally increasing.

High skill in your craft enables you to be in the flow more. You smoothly navigate the complexity of the business and your work, which unlocks the time that you can invest into creating more life i.e. spending with your loved ones.

People who are new in their roles are often struggling with balance because they are overindexing on their career working very hard to prove themselves. Tenured employees reap the benefits of the reputation they have built through years.

10. Contribution to Organizational Success

Legacy.

If this is something that's important to you, I invite you to reflect on this.

If you're a long-term employee, you're in a better position to contribute to innovation, continuous, iterative improvement within the company. And the company will be interested in leveraging your knowledge to improve organizational processes.

For some people, this could be the narrative of the legacy.

They construct a narrative that they have built a company or a business that has contributed positively to the society or maybe is solving a big problem that exists in the world.

These are my coaching questions to you:

• What's the concept of legacy for you?
• What is your vision?
• What are your values?
• What do you really want to achieve in life?

I invite you to reflect on this.

See if these narratives intertwine with the narrative of the legacy within a business for you.

I have a friend, and a colleague.

Dirk Bach.

Check out his LinkedIn.

This is not a job.

This is Life's Work.

What will be yours?

?? P.S.

You want financial freedom - go build a business. But I understand that building a business is not for everyone. Building a business is painful. Not everyone enjoys that form of suffering in life. Some of us need to go through the cycles of evolution in the corporate job.

And for those cycles, staying put in one org might be a good thing (and by good, I mean conducive to your vision, values, and goals).

If you are a Gen Z or a millennial, you would see a lot of noise and a lot of messaging around how job hopping can accelerate your career, and absolutely, that's a viable mechanism for progression.

But it's not the only one.

There could be other things that you might be blind to if you are considering only one side of the coin.

So, hopefully, this read will provide you with the other side.

Have mindful career transitions.

And I wish you the best in your ride.

You have one life.

Make it count.

Take care.

??