Re: Longevity (was: Belated Congratulations Trevor !)

Me:

1981 - System/34 - 1.5 years
1983 - System/38 - 1 year
1984 - System/38 - 1.5 years
1985 - System/38, System/36, IBM Mainframe - 2 years
1987 - System/38, AS/400 - 1.5 years
1988 - Co-founder of ISI, which began as an AS/400 consulting firm - my employer for the last 19 years

By the way - I don't necessarily judge someone's employability by the number of positions that they have held over their employement history. Just because a person has worked for 15 different companies over the last 20 years, I wouldn't refuse to hire them because they might be considered a "job hopper".

I also wouldn't rule out a person who has been working as a contractor either.

The decision point for me is that they should have a tenure of at least 2 years somewhere during their employment history, and if they're decent as a contractor, they should show at least ONE gig for a repeat customer along the way.

Example 1:
I worked at Blockbuster Video on three separate occasions as a consultant employee of ISI

Example 2:
My last project was for Emerson in Austin as a consultant for ISI. This was a 3-month project in 2001 that turned into an almost 5-year deal, which saved my bacon during some BAD times for midrange programmers...

In looking at the tenure of full-time employees at my current client in Fort Worth, I see an average of over five years...
One contractor who retired and left here in December 2006 worked here as a contractor for close to NINE years (this was his second career, his first career was as a meteorologist turned IT guy working for the Air Force).

Regards,
Steve




----- Original Message ----- From: "David Gibbs" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:28 AM
Subject: Longevity (was: Belated Congratulations Trevor !)

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Chuck Lewis wrote:

Trevor Perry joins KMR!

This post in MIDRANGE-L got me to thinking ... anyone know what the
average tenure of a technology worker (System i or other) is these days?

I'm just a few days shy of 10 years at my current job ... longest I've
ever been at a single company. Before I came here (MKS) I didn't stay
more than 3 years at any one company. I kind of always was in 'looking
for a new job' mode.

Any thoughts?

david


--
System i ... for when you can't afford to be out of business
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