I recently spoke with one of the programmers who joined a company two months ago. He had joined as a junior programmer, for a year and a half he had not been in the office.
He doesn’t own most of the good programmers I’ve seen leave their jobs after 1–3 years unless they are company shareholders.
There are many reasons why programmers do that, and it’s perfectly normal. We talked about why programmers do that. In the past an employee could spend all his time in a company but that has changed, now it’s easier to find a new job.
In some sectors the scenario is still the same. But in the world of technology it is almost impossible for a programmer to think of working for more than 5–10 years. There are many cases where a programmer works for more than 5–10 years but when asked directly to a programmer who has been in the industry for more than 5 years, on average they will say they are not interested in staying in the job for a long time.
One of the most common reasons for them is Learning Opportunity.
In the early stages of a career as a programmer, you certainly need to learn a lot of things. Companies will learn from their experiences and programmers will learn from the many technologies that are developing, projects they are working on and from senior programmers in the company. Maybe if the place they work for is a giant company then they can get a chance to learn from the company. But in contrast to small or medium-sized companies, some programmers will feel there is not much to learn so that Learning Opportunity becomes narrow.
Technological developments are changing faster than ever. That’s why learning is a never ending process for programmers. This is one of the main reasons why programming is one of the unique types of work in the world.
So, when should you leave a job? There is no right answer, honestly. You have to find your answer. I just shared my opinion and some statistics.
