Depends entirely on what the job is.
Is the 42 year old a welder? Then 48 different jobs might mean they’re in super high demand and contract out to high paying, low time frame jobs.
Is the 42 year old a cop or a priest? Probably skips town a lot for… reasons…
Most any other job might just mean they’ve had an interesting life and like to try new things. Their broad experience might mean they’re great for what they’re currently doing.
Even if he’s a coder I wouldn’t be surprised. Also I spent 5 years as a consultant and worked fot 1 company in about 10 diferent companies doing different things, is that 10 differenr jobs?!
I would ask follow up questions to his statement
That’s going to depend a lot on context. Did he travel the world for five years, working a different temporary job at each stop? Or did he repeatedly get fired for pissing in the boss’ in-tray?
This is the answer.
Also what types of employers. Large companies vs small business.
Or maybe had to simultaneously work multiple full time jobs and a weekend job to make ends meet?
I’m 38 and I’ve had about half of that, but the vast majority was from 16-25. They were all shitty retail things or short term odd job type things, but work is work so I include them if someone asks how many jobs I’ve had except on a resume of course. I just stick to relevant things there.
I’ve done everything from retail, to refrigeration diagnostic work. From wiping ass and giving meds, to even being a carnie. The only type of jobs I’ve never had are “real people jobs” like office work. I’m just a subhuman meat machine.
Gen-X in tech here. When I was about to enter the workforce we were told that having multiple jobs in our resume or showing that we stayed at a job less than five years was really bad and would make us difficult to hire because it showed that we couldn’t be depended on.
Fuck that!
I switched jobs all the time as I chased higher salaries and bigger benefits. If they wanted my skills they needed to pay me AND they needed to guarantee me at least two off-site training programs per year. All that training and experience in different technologies and environments made me more and more valuable until my only option was to go into consulting so that multiple clients could benefit at once and none need to commit to paying me beyond the scope of their project.
I’ve had 50. It depends on the person and the jobs.
Some jobs are minimum wage BS jobs that people are doing just to stay alive, if you burn out on a BS job in 6 weeks that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I also typically have worked multiple jobs at the same time. I’ve had two full-time jobs and a part-time job while going to school and not sleeping for more than 5 hours a night for like 9 months.
Are you going to hold that against me, or does it show that I have the drive and initiative to accomplish my goals no matter how difficult they may be?
Sure, I bounced between jobs a lot when I was in my teenage years and my early twenties, but once I hit college and built a career and my employment history has been Rock fucking solid, typically 3+ years between job changes.
I would say that my last 14 years of employment weighs a lot more heavily than my first 5 years of employment.
That the person probably won’t stick around for long. I’d still give them a fair chance, but if they up and quit one day out of nowhere I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not in charge of the hiring though, so I just work with whoever I’m told to work with.
“That’s so cool man. What was the weirdest one?”
I don’t correlate much from job count. I have had 5 in the last 8 years, two of those following layoffs. Shit happens.
What’s wrong with that? If you only find 3 months jobs you end up that way. And if you sprinkle some 1 week jobs the count rises very fast.
Make friends with the guy. He’s got some some stories. True or not, he’s got some stories.
why would i need an opinion on that?
