Should You Change Jobs?
Reasons to stay in the same role or company
If your current role is giving most of what you need and taking you where you want to go, it can be rewarding to continue doing the same thing for a long time. Staff engineering benefits from the longevity, domain knowledge, and relationships that you build over time in one place. Here are some other reasons it’s good to spend a long time in one place:
Feedback loops
Staying in one place for gives you the feedback loop that comes from seeing the consequence of your actions. When engineers move around a lot, everyone’s seeing the results of someone else’s past decisions instead of the outcome of their own. You may also get to see the colleagues you leveled up become senior or staff engineers and then become role models themselves.
Depth
The more you know a single domain or a single stack, the deeper and more nuanced your understanding will get. It takes time to intuitively understand something so well that you can build on the knowledge. It’s also faster to do things you’ve done before; you’ll be able to make progress more quickly.
Relationships
You’ve invested time in knowing people all over the organization, and you have people you trust and enjoy working with. You’ve built up enough mutual goodwill that even the biggest technical disagreements are collegial, not heated. That’s an asset that takes time to build up again.
Context
After investing time and effort into learning how to navigate your organization, you have a skill set that might not translate to another one. You’ve figured out the OKR process, you know the shadow org chart, and you know how to get things done.
Familiarity
You know the work, the schedule, and the people. If you observe particular religious holidays, pick your kid up from school every afternoon, or always play bocce at lunchtime on Thursday, you’ve already set up your schedule to make that happen. It just works, and you are reluctant to change anything.
Reasons to move
But there are also good reasons you might want to move around at intervals:
Employability
If you stay in one place for a very long time, you might be learning how to work in that culture rather than learning transferable skills. The world outside can shift, and you can get left behind. Keeping more skills and domains fresh can keep more doors open.
Experiences
There will be a limited number of experiences available in any one place, and a limited number of people to learn from. Once you’ve collected everything available, you might be ready for something new.
Growth
It can sometimes be easier to get a step up in level or scope by changing jobs. Maybe the next level feels too far out of reach to realistic or involves the kind of politics or work you’re just not interested in. If you’re struggling to get your name in the ring for the important, challenging, or visible projects where you are, it can be easier to find a new job than get the promotion you’re hoping for.
Money
Changing jobs can be the fast track to higher salaries. While some companies stay up to date with their current employees, often new hires can negotiate better salaries, stock grants, and hiring bonuses.
Mismatch
Not all paths to growth exist at all companies. If you’re looking to become an industry expert on a topic your organization doesn’t really need an export in, if the projects you’re energized by aren’t the ones that your leadership wants to invest in, or if there are more senior people than there are leadership opportunities, it might be time to move on. Not all roles are available in all spaces.
The right next steps will depend on what you need.
