How do you know when it’s time to leave your job? I have a theory that I believe, and I’m gonna tell you what that is, but I wanna play this video for y’all that was released on CNBC, and then we gonna leapfrog off of that in order to have a conversation. 95% of american workers said they plan to look for a new job in 2024. Money’s a big part of this.

45% of american workers say they need a higher income job. Switchers increase their salary more quickly, on average, than those who stay put. In February 2024, people who stayed at their job for more than three months increased their salary by 5. 1% year. Look at this graph really quickly, y’all. So if you look after the two thousands, you can see it start to go like this. It literally do like this.

And it nose dabs in 2008 to 2010. That was some tough times. That was rough times. Oh, my God. Rough, rough, rough, rough. People in 2000, between 2008 and 2012, people were just trying to stay. They was just trying to hold on. They was trying to hold on to a job. You didn’t even see people trying to level up, trying to get a better job. They wasn’t necessarily trying to get raises or promotions.

People were trying to literally just hold on and be able to get in there, keep their foot in the door. Hopefully they can hold on to their property. People was upside down in their mortgages and stuff like that. It was crazy, crazy. People was happy to just have a job. Thinking about no inflation, which jobs increased by 5. 9%. I ended up almost doubling my salary after a year and a half.

And then from there each year, I probably increase my salary from anywhere to 15,000 to 35 or 40,000. But hiring professionals stress that it’s important to be strategic about job moves. You don’t want to rise up the ranks too quickly and then be this expensive head that’s sort of easy to chop in any kind of downturn. I think companies do expect an unrealistic level of loyalty, but unfortunately, we’re at their whim a lot of times, right? So we do have to.

Hey, I’ve seen this girl before. What was this girl on? Wasn’t she on a video that we had reviewed before about finances or something like that? Play the game, and that game is making it seem like you’re gonna spend the rest of your life there. They really do want to be lied to. So how long is the optimal amount of time to stay at your job for your career advancement, salary, and your well being.

The survey data about why people leave their jobs is pretty consistent across the board. Ranking at the top of the list are wanting a higher salary and not feeling like they have room for growth at their current job. The desire for higher salaries may lead people to job hop, which is when a worker jumps from job to job within a short period of time. Oftentimes, switching companies is the fastest way to get to that next level role in terms of seniority and in terms of your income level.

And the reality behind that is in your current company, for you to get promoted, for you to get to the next level, that position needs to open up in a way that it’s either someone leaves or they get promoted, or the company is growing. And she’s 100% right. She’s 100% right. I tell people to do both. And because a lot of people will say, hey, man, I got seniority in this company.

I want to stay or whatever. But then a lot of times you’ve got. Because you got to remember, think of it like a mountain or a pyramid, and everything goes up like this, right? Not a pyramid scheme, but like a pyramid. And so what happens is, is when you at the bottom, let’s say you want a floor, you’re just a regular worker. You just, you know, a maintenance guy or whatever, it’s going to be plenty of those jobs.

At the bottom, it’s gonna be plenty of mail room jobs. It’s gonna be plenty of those. And so if you’re thinking at the bottom, right, because it’s the CEO at the top and then in the chairman, and then you got all of these people that’s at the bottom, what happens is the further you go up to the top, the smaller the positions are, right? So if you only got this many vps and this many directors and this many this and this, and depending on what division or whatever, the closer you get up to the top of that pyramid, the less room that there is for other people to be able to take over that position.

And so you got two things that’s happening or working for you in that position. You’re either waiting on somebody to leave or you waiting on somebody to create a position for you that would allow you to continue to accelerate up the corporate ladder. And so while you’re there, of course you want to stay on a career track. Of course you want to continue to grow. Of course you want to continue to get promoted, but you don’t want to stay too long, because the other side of that equation is the recruitment of you to other places where they have vacancies, that’s where you network.

That’s when you got to start having conversations. That’s when you got to read the book, how to win friends and influence people. And then you don’t understand that there’s a certain time frame, that certain employers look for talent, because, number one, they want to know that you’re going to be there. They want to know that you’re going to be there long enough to make some meaningful change. And I can’t tell you how many times that jobs, or even we at the places that I’ve been at, we forego a candidate because we see that they job hop too often, and we know that they’re just trying to climb the corporate ladder, which is cool.

We want you to be able to climb the corporate ladder and be successful, but we don’t want to put all of that money in that job search into you, especially from an executive recruitment perspective. And then you only leave six months to a year from now. And so that’s when we start to pay attention to that thing, right? Because we want to, but then at the same time, we want you to make meaningful change or to have an impact of what you’re doing at the company.

And so what they look for is a certain timeframe that allows for you to ultimately make your mark at that company, to have some time under your belt but still be getting promoted. And so you still want to be working on getting those raises and promotions, but at the same time, you don’t want to wait for them. So my rule of thumb, my personal rule of thumb is you want to buy the three year mark, because the two to three year mark, you got some projects under your belt, you’ve made some friends, you’ve impacted the company, you got some equity in the company.

You can speak to some of the changes that you’ve made and you’ve implemented that allow for you to continue to progress, grow, and become more successful within that company. And so around a two to three year mark is when you want to start getting the itch. All right? That’s the time that you want to start girding up, making sure that your LinkedIn is updated, make sure that you tapping in all of your resources, getting around different people within the company probably changed positions or they went to other companies.

You want to make sure you stay in touch with those, and then you want to continue to gird up and prepare yourself for the opportunity that comes. One of the mistakes that people make often at times, is they let too much time pass before they start to think about the possibility of leaving, because either they’re scared or they don’t think that they can move into a different position or where they’ll be fruitful or, you know, they’ve worked at this, you know, public institution or this nonprofit, but it’s so much money, so much more money on a private side.

And then they’ve changed their personal lives around this job. I don’t want to leave because now I’m going, I’m not going to be able to work from home. I’m going to have to be more visible. I got a second job over here. So there’s a lot of things that then prevent you from actually getting to the next level because you’ve tailored your life around the lifestyle that you have at that particular position.

But I’m telling you, every single time, they’ll pay you more to leave than they will pay you to stay. As far as getting a regular promotion, they will pay you more to leave than they will to pay you to stay and get that regular promotion. And most people, most people are happy with titles, they happy with stability, and they’re happy with their certain position and so they don’t seek change.

But by that two and a half, three year mark, that’s the time that you want to start getting the itch. If you’re looking to accelerate and continue to grow in corporate America, I mean, it’s so big, you can double and triple your income and one move over into the next company, one move over into the next company, you double and tripling your income and it adds value into your resume.

By the four year mark you should be running, you should be actively actively looking for and participating in your own growth and your own success as far as entertaining opportunities outside of the position that you in between three and four years, that’s the time that you really have that window. By the time you hit the five year, six year, seven year mark, you stuck in your ways. It is much more difficult to get you to leave.

Even if you go and you get educated and you get educated in a different field or something like that, you’re not going to move. You just getting that, getting that education for your own well being. And if you don’t get promoted within a company, you’re never gonna leave. You’re never gonna leave. People get stuck in a ways on a regular basis and they wind up staying at the same company for a very long time.

Once they get past the five and six year mark, they just sit there and then they make excuses for themselves. And they say, well, it’s okay, you know, I haven’t, I’m not tripping and I’m comfortable or whatever, or what if, what if I have to go into work? What if this? What if that? What if you make more money? What if you make double your salary? The thing that you first have to ask yourself is, what will it cost you to leave? The comfort of the position that you have right there? What will it cost you to leave? What do they have to pay you? And then that’s what you shoot for.

Let me play the video. I forgot to play more of the video. It’s either someone leaves or they get promoted, or the company is growing. Gen Z is 36% more likely than other generations to prioritize advancement opportunities. Even if there are opportunities for promotions within their current workplace, they may still find it easier to leave. A lot of employers are reaching out to people and recruiting them. Workers have more negotiating power that way.

You can also find out more easily what wages are available just by, you know, going on zip recruiting, looking at job postings, whereas perhaps finding out what things the opportunities are within your company involve sort of an uncomfortable conversation with your manager. Other common reasons for leaving are to get better benefits, to escape a toxic work environment, and for better work life balance. The ancillary thing is, if I pay people more, would they be happier? If that were true, then investment banks and private equity firms, law firms, would be the happiest places in the world to work.

They notoriously aren’t viewed that way because there’s a certain way that you treat people, whether it’s benefits, or whether it’s time off or compensation, or quite frankly, just how you treat people on a day in and day out basis with interpersonal skills, those are the things that end up being more important. Workers also have career aspirations that may not be fulfilled in their current positions. Early in my career, I always had the goal of eventually working for myself.

So I told myself around the age of 30, try and get enough experience and exposure to the things that are required to have a consulting firm. So each job that I’ve worked, I’ve always left a company. If I felt like I had already obtained the skill that I needed to obtain, and if I wasn’t getting opportunities to obtain the skills that I needed, I went to the next place.

As humans, we tend to change every two to three years in terms of our goals, our priorities, our stages of life. And now the younger generations ask themselves, well, how does my career serve me and not the other way around? There’s never a wrong reason to want to leave. If you want to leave, you can leave, right? But you have to be smart about leaving. Americans consistently stay at their jobs for a median of three to four years.

In 2022, the median tenure was 4. 1 years. In 2002, it was 3. 7. And back in 1983, it was 3. 5 years. What did I say? Now, there’s a couple different caveats to that, right? Because what also feeds into this is the fact that some people get forced out of the position that they’re in now. That’s the worst kind of thing that you can do. Because if you’re getting forced out, meaning that you’re getting laid off or they’re downsizing and they’re forcing you to do more with less, and then now you becoming disgruntled or you don’t like it, and that’s when you’re starting to leave.

Now you operate with a duress mindset and you’re never going to get what you’re supposed to get as a result of it. When you operate out of abundance and you comfortable, what generally happens is you’re moving differently because you don’t feel like you got nothing to lose. Think about it like this. If I already got it, I’m less likely to take something that undervalues what my worth is to the next company.

And then I’m also going to negotiate for more because I’m already straight. And the worst thing that you can tell me is no. And so I’m playing with house money, you loose, you cool. Even in the interview process, you having a different type of conversation because it’s like, hey, I’m interviewing you just as much as you interviewing me. But if you ain’t got no job and you just trying to get a job, you desperate and you look desperate, you operate desperate, you speak desperate, and it translates as far as them feeling like they can get you at an undervalued space because you just happy to be there and you happy to have a job.

And so that’s why you have to continuously move. That’s why you have to continuously have conversations with your manager. They’re there and they actually benefit from you having expectations to continue to get promoted because that’s what their goal is. Their goal. And they’re supposed to help you track up. As they track up, you track up and you all make money. But if you’re not actually participating in the process to see exactly where you’re going to go, you’re going to just be making lateral moves because you disgruntled or you getting forced out, then you’re just going to be happy to have a job.

But when you actually make a career path or you set yourself to get to a certain point, you start to work towards those goals, and then you transition within your life based off of those goals. But breaking those numbers down by age paints a clearer picture about how long americans should stay at their jobs. Between 2002 and 2022, workers aged 20 to 24 typically stayed at their jobs for less than one and a half years.

As you look at older workers, the median tenure increases with each age group. I think a lot of people think of job hopping as being generational, but it’s actually more driven by age than generation. So are parents generations at the same age as young people today? A lot of the data shows that they quit at very similar rates. A Bureau of labor statistics study found that american adults born between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 12.

7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 56, with nearly half of those jobs held before the age of 25. I think the idea that you have to stay at one company for an extended period of time comes most probably from our families and our parents, because their expectation and their version of success was to stay within one company, or at least within one career, their entire life.

Our parents would get pensions. They would work for a company for a certain amount of time, retire, and be paid for the rest of our lives. So the incentives have shrunk, and so the loyalty is just not there. Another thing to consider is a lot of benefits accrue over time. So if you switch companies too quickly, you could be leaving money on the table. For example, some employers won’t allow you to keep your 401k match until you’ve been there for a certain number of years.

I see a huge wave of Gen Z and millennial professionals asking themselves, is this job, is this career right for me? And what do I want for my career to look like and to feel like, and where do I find this career versus feeling like, hey, I have to stay doing what I’ve been doing in my career? Recruiters say there’s more leeway for job switching earlier in your career.

Gen Z can do that right now because they’re in their early twenties, but when they get to their late twenties or their early thirties, they can’t be moving like that. You’re 22 years old, you’re not making any career mistakes right now. There are so many places that you could go, and none of them would be a mistake because you’re so young and you have so many years to figure out what you want to do when you’re 35.

Not really, right? Ideally, you’re in your career and you’re making a good salary with great benefits. And once you have that, you need to be more strategic and intentional about those moves that you make, because now you can make a really bad career mistake. Instead of asking how long you should stay at your job, career experts suggest shifting your focus to how much you’ve accomplished. I think the biggest risk with job hopping or leaving your job too early is you not understanding where you are in your development.

And that’s why I try to tell people, remove your focus on money, especially if you’re being compensated, okay, and you’re able to pay your bills and survive. Don’t focus on just getting a huge pay bump before you are actually ready, before you have gained the right skills. Don’t focus on time. Don’t focus on money. Focus on skills. And if you are comfortable in the skills that you are acquiring, then you are ready to move on to the next level.

Workers may also want to consider looking at their career as a whole rather than honing in on only tenure or compensation. I took a $20,000 pay cut when I job topped the first time. I knew that was okay because it would come back tenfold based on the experience I was going to be getting at the new place of work. So I don’t focus on the money, and I know that’s a privileged thing to say because my roles compensate me well.

And at the time when I started my career, I just really shrunk my cost of living. I would say I lived in a house. So she lowered her cost of living, which would then accommodate for her, making sure that she executed on a long term vision because she was going to get the skills skillset that would then propel her into it. I’ll give you an example. Right? I know people that would go and work at a big name company just to be able to get it on a resume, which would then propel them to be able to get a much, much, much bigger payday long term.

You see what I’m saying? So some people will make the sacrifice earlier in which they’re not necessarily trying to leverage the fact that, oh, my God, I’m making as much money as I possibly can. I’ll give you a better example. Some people where I’m from in Detroit, the goal initially was just to make as much money as you possibly could, as fast as you could, and then to be able to live the lifestyle right and so some people coming straight out of college or, I’m sorry, straight out of high school, back in the day, they used to be able to get straight into the plan, and then it was making a bunch of money or whatever, and it seems as though they was getting ahead of you.

And then it was other people that said, you know what? I don’t want to work in a plan. I don’t want to do what my father did. I don’t want to do. And it’s nothing wrong with working. I don’t care what you do, as long as you happy and as long as you feel like you continue into progress and you’re doing it legally, then get your bag. So that’s not what this conversation is, but I’m using this as an example in order to illustrate taking a step backwards so you can take ten steps forward.

And then, you know, you would get into the plant and you would make as much money as you can. And I know because I worked in a steel plant, right. But then there were other people that went to college, and it seemed like there was poor and you was doing better than them, but they were supposed to be poor because they was in college and they wasn’t making any money.

But ultimately, the field that they picked, let’s just say they picked, you know, eventually becoming some form of a doctor, right. And they made way more money long term because they understood that the short term sacrifices was going to pay off much, much greater, longer. And so when you look at the trajectory, on one hand, the person right here is the person that went out of high school when they started making a whole bunch of money right away.

And then they just tried, they stayed in that position and never excelled, and they made that money for the rest of their life. And then the person that went to school, that went to a specific curriculum, they did like this. And then it eventually did like this. Right. And so you have to. What she’s basically explaining to you is a philosophy that I’ve been teaching. Make sure y’all tap into the Patreon link is in the description is that depending on your career trajectory, and you got to start at the front and in reverse engineer what you want outside of your life, meaning that ultimately you start at the end goal and then you start to start to milestone exactly what you need to get in order to get to that end goal and then how fast you can get there so you can better understand exactly what that trajectory is.

Often at times, you can beat those times, but if you don’t have an end goal. Most people make the mistake of only looking at what they want their next step to be instead of ultimately having a conversation about where they want their life to be at the end and what kind of lifestyle that they want, and then how I’m supposed to get there by milestone in it out.

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