[lopsa-discuss] Career planning

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:48 AM -0600 2005-12-06, Doug Hughes wrote:

>  My minimum stay at a job has been 3 years and my maximum was 7. Most
>  people don't tend to stay that long. I don't know that there is
>  any specific metric. There are some people in the community who have been
>  in the same position for 10 years or more (I'd surmise if you took a
>  survey most of them would be in academia; that's where my 7 years was).

	I spent over five years in DoD, working at various jobs within 
DISA -- I could have stayed there for many more years, but I was 
going nuts.  Two years at AOL, before the pressure got to be too 
much.  Six months at Collective Technologies, before we moved to 
Europe.  Two years at Skynet, before Belgacom decided to re-absorb 
them into the parent company, and just about everyone with half a 
clue bailed like rats leaving a sinking ship.  My contract with Snow 
was only for one year when I signed it, and the company was in very 
bad financial condition at the end of that year, and were unable to 
renew.

	I don't think that this is exceptionally unusual.  If you're 
employed in government or academia, then many long years of service 
are probably the norm.  If you're employed in high-pressure 
net.startups that may be subject to bubble conditions, then shorter 
periods of employment are going to be typical.


	This is one reason why I like working for consulting companies. 
You get to go a lot of places, see a lot of different working 
environments, and although you may not work at any one particular 
site for long, you still have reasonably good job security.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  LOPSA member since December 2005.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.