Opportunistically moving between jobs has always been a thing in tech, but this decade it seems to have really become a strategy for some. I'm working as an IC currently, but in this role I'm interviewing at least half the candidates who come through our pipeline, and I have to say that I'm shocked at times at the frequency that some have moved between jobs. Six, seven, eight jobs in a decade are not uncommon.

In general, while I support people's desire to make the best decisions for themselves and their families, I don't really believe in job hopping as a technologist. You really need time in an engineering, product or design role to thrive. Unless you come in knowing the business domain, it can take a year or more to get your mental models right, to understand who the customer is and - in the case of B2B - who the user(s) are, and what matters to whom. Usually the tech is the easier aspect, but it's still rarely easy, especially in brownfield shops where there's often layers of lava to dig through and often just as many opinions as there are Senior+ engineers.

In a career now firmly in its second decade, I can say that the most satisfying periods and the periods when I was learning the most were the same - they were the periods 2-5 years into a job or role, when I really "knew what I was doing", and could make a nice impact on the business and the people around me.

Note that I'm not referring to someone who has left a job or two after a short period of time. I am talking about people who are intentionally moving between jobs every 12-18 months, without ever staying longer at any of them, as an intentional strategy to maximize title and/or compensation.