A good strategy in this scenario is to take the first job you can when you need money, but keep interviewing. This way you can be more selective since your needs are already being met.

Sorry but that's a very good way to hurt your career. The community is surprisingly small. As in, I swear it's less than 3 hops from me to most people who might cross my desk when recruiting. I can tell you we know who have done this and we shy away from them. They're a waste of time.

I've been criticised because I was only at a job for 12 months. I've also been criticised for staying 3 years.

Apparently I'm a terrible employee who left too early and stayed too long. I'm so glad I'm no longer an employee - hiring is horribly broken.

Yep, I've been in a job for 11 months now that I knew was a bad fit by the end of the first week.

I figure I need to stay at least a year -- at least then I won't have to pay the singing bonus back.

Huh. I can't understand where you would be to have that happen - my job pool is about ten countries in Europe, a few in Africa and Asia, plus Australia. (Countries where you can expect programming jobs to allow for English-only speakers.)

Working on the same city?

Most people don't keep jumping between countries.

Even on a large city like Lisbon it is relatively easy to meet old time university friends or former colleges, because consulting companies have more or less the same costumers.

You really can't?

so you prefer the type of employee who is willingly exploited and doesn't show the same level of loyalty as they can reasonably expect the company to show them?

Agreed. Employers don't necessarily deserve loyalty unless they earn it. They often fire people on a whim to rapidly lower costs for this quarter. Meanwhile someone has missed time with family etc to meet an arbitrary deadline that only really benefited someone in marketing anyway.

Employers afraid of losing employees should be reminded that employees aren't property. Employees are often stuck with employers for multiple hard reasons and employers know this and exploit it. I've encountered many employers who actively select for employees based on their ability to be manipulated for these kinds of reasons, eg student / mortgage debt as handcuffs.

Yeah, I hear this - the problem can be in some cases that the job you get for money may have come from a contact that if you up-and-leave will negatively affect your relationship with them.

An even better strategy is to always have a buffer. Under most circumstances it's not hard at all with a software engineer salary.