Commentary: Changing Jobs
Some of my friends have recently change job. No big deal, happens all the time in Silicon Valley. Not everyone blogs about it. In the comments, one of my other friends, who happens to have also changed his job recently, posted a link to “inspiring corporate confidence“. It’s a little hard to follow (like some of my writing), but here’s the gist. You either move jobs fairly frequently or you sit a jobs for a long time. In today’s world, if you sit at one job for too long, it’s a bad thing. The writer says if you don’t change jobs you should keep things at your current place of employment challenging by doing tasks similar to the following:
Keep learning new information. Attend the seminars and workshops recommended on your professional development plan (if you don’t have one, make one yourself); take a class at your community college (traditional or online); read a book from the best-selling list.
Become an expert in your industry or discipline. Read trade periodicals, visit vendors or listen in on meetings when they visit the office; go to professional conferences; earn professional designations; make presentations to groups with an interest in your field.
Continually expand your skill base. Learn a new software package through self-study, help from a friend, or a class; offer your services for special projects (sponsored by your company, a non-profit group, or another organization) to strengthen your planning, organizational, networking, and/or leadership skills.
Try out new ideas. You may be able to make changes to your daily activities without any corporate approvals. Even small improvements, made consistently over time, can keep your habits up-to-date and work results stellar.
I contend, these are great things to do even if you change jobs a lot. In fact, the main reason you like to change jobs a lot is to accomplish the things above. In larger companies (where people tend to settle longer), it can be actually quite difficult to do some of these self-improvement tasks. (Although, I have heard stories that HP and Lucent back in the day had people running their own real estate firms out of their cubes.) In the Valley, usually you need to change jobs to take a career step. I just advise you NOT to just change jobs for money.