Because people get complacent and changing jobs is a lot of work. Updating resumes, writing cover letters, prepping for interviews, kissing butts in interviews, taking drug tests, onboarding..thinking about going through that makes my skin crawl. Most people won’t go through that until they are pushed to their limit by a company. And every job I have quit was because of culture and/or incompetence, had nothing to do with money.

They do. Job hopping every 1-2 years is pretty standard for software engineers, and it's pretty common for people to feel like the only way to get a significant raise is to get a new job.

I job hopped throughout my 20s, partially to increase my income but also because I was hoping to find a company that isn't dysfunctional. So far I haven't found one. The biggest problem with retention, IMO, is that the vast majority of companies are shiny-object chasing feature factories. The framework, language, and library churn is just exhausting and saps all the fun out of writing software.

> why most employees don't try to exploit this imbalance by continuously applying to other companies?

we do; it's great :)

https://www.inc.com/business-insider/tech-companies-employee...

> Uber was at the bottom of the list, with a short average employee tenure of just 1.8 years.

> Netflix has broken the three year barrier, holding on to employees for an average of 3.1 years, to be exact.

Because having too many companies on a resume prevents a person from being employable

5 6-month stints in a row is a red flag for me (as a hiring manager).

If you have 3 18-24 month stints (and ideally earned a promotion at any company [rather than only on a company change]), and a couple of shorter ones, it's fine.

People are overly worried about the second case, IMO. If you're at a company that sucks, the very best thing you can do is change companies.

I usually evaluate companies at the 1 year mark. I will switch if there is a better offer. Like 30% or more increase.

Are you from the past?

We are all from the past ;)