The Job-Hop Salary Bump Is Dying

We are a long way from 2012 Silicon Valley, where the bros just jumped between FAANG companies to get 9% more every two years.

The screenshot above is from this article in Wall Street Journal, and in a sea of weird economic indicators, it might be one of the most annoying to see. It is absolutely true that recruiters and hiring managers have long held a “job-hopping stigma,” but in reality it was also kind of bullshit. Most people understood, even if it was a “quiet part out loud” or open secret situation, that the fastest way to make more money was to job-hop.

The math was pretty simple: let’s say you maybe got a 2.5% raise cooked in every year, and periodically out of your team of 10–12, your boss promoted you on top of that raise (but that promotion was not annual). Meanwhile, if you put in 3–4 years at a place and seem like you’re competent and you can get through the mess of ghost jobs and algorithmic screeners and the like, maybe another company (a different type of hellhole!) is willing to pay you a 5.1% increase on your salary. The job-hopping logic was fierce. Recuiters and hiring managers spun a narrative that it says something about “loyalty” or “commitment,” when 88% of those people would also job-hop for more money. It was all a quiet lie that we told ourselves.