Thanks! I agree that the amount of career capital a position will generate is an important factor in any career decision, “overqualified” or not.
I’m curious about your “it can be hard to reverse” statement though: how frequently do you think this happens? At least in US tech, it’s pretty common for people to take a year off to organize against Trump or whatever, and a year of charity work is definitely not irreversible. When I’ve talked to recruiters they basically just ignore charity work, at worst.
Anecdotally it always feels like now is the wrong time to leave your job because (good thing) is right around the corner, but it’s usually perfectly fine to leave in actuality. Received wisdom (supported by some evidence) is that regularly switching jobs actually makes you more successful.
I’m not sure about tech! I was thinking the more business/management career track.
I definitely agree that regularly switching jobs is a good thing—this isn’t an argument against switching jobs, just against taking a much more junior role
Noting that the link you shared also shows that people who are externally hired seem to perform worse than those who are promoted. So if you care about performance more than pay, it may not be that good to switch jobs often?
Interesting point – my interpretation of that statistic is that external people are hired into more senior roles than internal people. I guess it’s also consistent with the hypothesis that external people get less mentorship though.
Thanks! I agree that the amount of career capital a position will generate is an important factor in any career decision, “overqualified” or not.
I’m curious about your “it can be hard to reverse” statement though: how frequently do you think this happens? At least in US tech, it’s pretty common for people to take a year off to organize against Trump or whatever, and a year of charity work is definitely not irreversible. When I’ve talked to recruiters they basically just ignore charity work, at worst.
Anecdotally it always feels like now is the wrong time to leave your job because (good thing) is right around the corner, but it’s usually perfectly fine to leave in actuality. Received wisdom (supported by some evidence) is that regularly switching jobs actually makes you more successful.
I’m not sure about tech! I was thinking the more business/management career track.
I definitely agree that regularly switching jobs is a good thing—this isn’t an argument against switching jobs, just against taking a much more junior role
Noting that the link you shared also shows that people who are externally hired seem to perform worse than those who are promoted. So if you care about performance more than pay, it may not be that good to switch jobs often?
Interesting point – my interpretation of that statistic is that external people are hired into more senior roles than internal people. I guess it’s also consistent with the hypothesis that external people get less mentorship though.