TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Nope, but I have seen people cite estimates of 2-5 years often enough to
consider this to be a typical ballpark estimate. Of course, these people
could all be simply repeating one unscientific estimate by someone vocal but
ill-informed, but I haven't seen anyone leap up to challenge these numbers,
and that lends them some credibility.
I read in a magazine a couple of years ago (sorry, I don't remember which one, so I can't cite it), that the average length of stay in the technical field was 18 months.
My opinion is that if you want to change jobs every couple years, you should
probably considering going freelance and working as a contractor. Then, if
someone complains that "you don't seem very stable, do you?", you can reply
with perfect confidence that you chose the contract life because you like
being your own boss and picking your own assignments. However, were I an
employer looking for full-time staff rather than contractors (and I'm not),
I'd have to ask myself whether I would really want to go through the hassle
of hiring someone again every 2.5 years. I wouldn't. That being the case,
I'd probably eliminate a candidate with a track record of frequent job
changes if I had several equally skilled candidates with longer tenures on
their resume. That's not necessarily a good criterion, because someone with
a broad range of experience might make an excellent choice, and might be a
particularly good choice if I'm expecting cyclical downsizing (heck, the
person will want to leave anyway, right?), but there's no guarantee I'd
follow that chain of logic were I submerged in resumes and trying to cut
down the number I had to review.
Sorry, Geoff. Gotta disagree with you here, especially in the case of California. While I now reside in Tennessee (God help me), I lived and worked in California for a number of years. It was and I believe still is quite common for people in the industry to make frequent moves; in fact, you might even say it's expected. All but one of my friends and colleagues in N. and S. California have made frequent moves. The longest I stayed anywhere personally was 37 months. Maybe it's different in Canada and the rest of the US (I think it is here in Tennessee), but California's a different beast and as a large technology employer, should be judged differently IMHO.
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by Information Mapping, Inc., a professional services firm
specializing in Knowledge Management and e-content solutions. See http://www.infomap.com or 800-463-6627 for more about our solutions.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
