changing jobs

I heard and believe if you dont change a job after 6 months your gonabe doing it for life!!

If your lucky enough to get a career doing what you love then stick with it but if its just a job to get money you may as well change as often as you like as long as you enjoy it or the money is better.

It depends on the job, and whether it always presents a fresh challenge.
In my personal experience, I worked for the same firm for fifteen years, first as a supervisor of a human services program, then as an assistant director, and then a director.

After five years as a supervisor, which I enjoyed, I was ready to move on. I loved being an assistant director, because I really liked my boss. When she left, I became the director. I then understood why my former boss kept a great big bottle of aspirin in her desk drawer.

For me, working with clients and staff was always a challenge. When I got to the director level, I was involved in the politics and the chickenshit, which I hated.

One should also keep in mind how all those job changes would look on a resume. A potential employer may think you are not worth hiring since you will only stay at a job for a given amount of time, be it 6 months or 10 years.
Of course, if you only change jobs every 10 years, it's not like you're going to hold that many of them anyhow.

Well, if I really enjoy the work at my job and feel that it is really providing me with all the compensations I want, I wouldn't leave the job.

Jobs are different. Some are burn-out jobs that people can only handle for a short period. Some are long-term jobs.

When I worked for an ad agency in the '80s, it was rare for anyone to stay there more than 2 years. They really didn't encourage it. They wanted fresh faces right out of design school. On the other hand, my husband has been with his company (technical sales) for 20 years and that's about average among his co-workers.

If I'm not mistaken, the average US college student these days can look forward to 3-4 career changes before he/she retires. That's not job changes, but entire career changes. Yes, the job market is changing that fast.

By sheer coincidence, I calculated yesterday that I will be 20 years in my current job come July. There have been times when I've loathed it and times when I dreaded walking through the office door in the morning, but I think that can be said for just about anything. On the whole, feeling that what I do for a living is worthwhile makes all the difference-- at least for me.

Also, in my experience, changing jobs is one of the most stressful things I've ever had to do, second only to changing residences. I don't know why anyone would want to do either one more than was absolutely necessary.

blacksmithn- I live in a 55+ community. It is amazing to me that some people will change residences as often as others buy new cars. I have known people who lived in 10 places in 30-40 years. I lived for 27 years in my former house, and have been in my present home for over 12 years, with no plans to move.

I think that whether one moves a lot, or changes jobs a lot (not counting layoffs) has a lot to do with an individual's personality. There are some folks who get bored easily, and are always looking for something new. Others like to settle in, where the comfort of the familiar has value to them. I have met a few people who have changed houses up to four times, just since their retirement.

My rule is change jobs every five years.

It depends on the nature of your work but in my field a new work place presents new challenges and opportunities to learn, as well as giving your new place of employment the benefit of a fresh eye and an indepth knowledge of how things were done somewhere else.

These days though you could sit at the same desk for twenty years and have worked for 8 different companies....

I thought there was a thing called the 7-year-itch.