“Should I switch jobs?” This is a question often asked by anyone working, anywhere. It’s only natural to always want to aim higher. But should you actually switch jobs?

In this post, I’ll give you the definitive answer, which is “maybe” (read below) – but you should always be looking and interviewing.

Keep in mind this post mainly considers whether or not you should switch jobs from a financial perspective (this is a personal finance blog, after all). Thus, if you don’t care about money or are 0% motivated by money, you should skip this post.

Should I Switch Jobs? No, If You Hate Money.

Switching jobs is the best and easiest way to getting a raise.

Think of getting job offers as a pure upside play, with zero downside risk for you.

You interview. Either you get job offers, or you don’t.

• If you don’t get offers for new jobs, you still get to keep your job (zero downside).
• If you do get offers for new jobs, you’re not obligated to take them. And you can only take them if the financials and the other intangibles fit your agenda.

That is, you have the edge of optionality and you only accept new opportunities when it’s advantageous to do so.

Conversely, if you don’t interview and seek new job opportunities, you have 0 exposure to the immense job market upside that could be available for you out there.

Lastly, let’s consider the financials. There’s an article that says people who stay at jobs for 2y+ get paid 50% less. This means that switching jobs every 2 years means you’ll double your lifetime career income.

When you ask yourself the question of “should I switch jobs?” also ask yourself:

• “Do I want to be only make half the money I could be actually making? Or do I want to work twice as long on my 9-5 for no reason?”

You Should Not Switch Jobs If Your Current Position Is Less Than 16 Months…Maybe.

There’s some study that says quitting before the 16 month mark has the same effect as if you had 5 years fewer experience.

Notice in this section subtitle I said ‘maybe’ you shouldn’t switch jobs. The reason for this is because even if you’re interviewing with a handicap, you should still interview.

If you get the outcome you want – a job offer with higher pay – then who cares that the study said you were, on average, “43% less hirable”? You still got hired. And 43% less hirable isn’t 100% less hirable.

You don’t lose anything by looking for new opportunities, except for time that you would have spent watching Squid Game anyway.

Lastly, even if you know you won’t accept a new offer and/or get a new offer, you should still have interview conversations with companies in your industry because of the next point.

Using Interviews To Keep Your Pulse On The Market

If you’re in tech industry, interviewing constantly isn’t a bad strategy. By talking to people constantly, you’ll know what sorts of technical questions people are asking in the industry.

In the tech industry, a lot of interview questions are asking you to solve hard engineering problems on the spot. The upshot is that a lot of these questions are reused across different companies. Thus, interviewing a lot is good practice. It’s much easier to ace an interview when you’ve seen the answer before.

While this is how it works in the tech industry, I believe interview (AKA having conversations with companies) is a great way to gather intel in any job market.

Interviewing tons also lets you iterate on how you’d hack your interviews, so you’ll have a significant edge by the time you actually want to change your job (i.e. more than 16-24 months mark).

In other words, interviewing frequently lets you:

• Continuously learn how to better your interviewing skills, and
• Keep up with the trends / sorts of people are asking in your industry.

Knowing what people will ask before they ask it is a huge advantage – instead of having to rise to the occasion in a one-shot interview, you can just fall back to your training that you got from your many reps of interviewing.

Doing real interviews for practice means you’ll be much more prepared than your competition when it does come time for you to switch jobs.

Wrapping It Up, And A Caveat

Caveat: some companies let you interview with them once a year, and will reject your application if it’s less than 1 year before you re-interview with them.

• Example: Google, for their technical positions.

Just be aware that some companies do this. If you don’t care about those positions, just interview with them anyway “as practice”. But if you really want those positions, then you might want to only interview for them once you’ve gotten enough practice.

In sum: switching jobs every 16-24 months will maximize your income, period. By a lot. As such, it’s worth it for you to continuously interview as a way to:

1. Talk to people in your industry
2. Know what interview questions people ask
3. Make interviews easier to pass because of the previous point
4. Let you “fall back on your training” instead of having to “rise up to the occasion” during interviews
5. Doing it a lot gets rids of any nerves you’d have in an interview environment. Less nerves = minimizes your chances of blunders = maximizes your chance of passing the interview.

An objection you might have: “I don’t have time to interview! My work is super busy!”

My response to that is: it doesn’t matter if you finish all your tasks at work. Or if you do almost nothing. You’ll get paid exactly the same. You might as well use your 9-5 time to study for interviews and take interview calls.

You owe your company / corporation nothing. They’re not loyal to you, and you should not be loyal to them. Being loyal to a company is like being faithful to a cheating spouse. Makes no sense.

The only person you owe loyalty to is yourself and your family that’s depending on you to maximize your money.