Forget climbing the ladder. The modern career path is less about ascending and more about sprinting from one rung to another while everyone else is still tying their shoes.
The latest trend sweeping through tech and beyond is what some call “lily-padding”—the art of bouncing between jobs every year or so, each move supposedly a strategic leap toward the dream role. And it works, sort of, if you measure success by the number of times you can update your LinkedIn headline without your mother asking if you’re okay.
The math is simple: stay at a company for two years and get a 3% raise. Leave and join a competitor as a “senior” version of your old title for a 20% bump. Repeat. Rinse. Bring your own chair to every office because you will not be there long enough to break in the one they assigned you.
The real genius is that employers have somehow accepted this as the cost of doing business. They invest in onboarding, training, and integrating you into the team just in time for you to accept a marginally better offer from someone across town. It is a game where everyone loses except the people who win, which is basically everyone who plays.
The downside—and there is always a downside—is that you will never actually know how to do anything, because mastery requires staying somewhere long enough to see a project through to completion. But who needs deep expertise when you can have a resume that reads like a startup graveyard and the kind of interview stories that make hiring managers weep into their coffee?
The new secret to career success is simple: treat every job like a dating app match. Swipe left when the novelty wears off. Your next chair is always one email away.