I know this is true but it stings to see this as someone who has unfortunately done a lot of job hopping. It all "made sense" at the time, and looking back I wonder what I should have done differently, but at this point I really don't want to job hop anymore. This is how I explain my story to hiring managers:

* Startup ABC: 3 years -> Quit for a job that allowed me to break into a niche.

* Company BigCo: 9 Months -> Got asked to return to ABC as a leader, related to niche. "Great opportunity", didn't have a record of job hopping at the time, took it!

* Startup ABC: (Another) 3 years -> Got tired of the grind and quit for a job at Startup XYZ. Seemed reasonable at the time.

* Startup XYZ: 3 Months -> Toxic work environment, quit for mental health reasons. Requires the most explaining, but I felt totally justified and have since been vindicated by semi-public info about the org.

* Company HugeCo: 6 Months -> Got an offer from Meta that represented a 2x increase in comp (plus prestige of Big Tech). Hard to say no.

* Meta: 1 year -> Saw the writing on the wall my team was going to get crushed in layoffs and opportunistically jumped while I could. Ended up being correct about my team's fate btw.

* Startup JKL -> Been here for 4 months with no plan of leaving.

So all in all, in the last 4 years I've had 4 jobs, the "danger zone" as the OP put it. I don't have any desire to change jobs again soon. How would you view my story? Would you see me as a serial job hopper? Someone who can't commit? Or someone who made a series of reasonable choices in isolation that resulted in a disjointed resume? Most of this took place between 2019-2022 when the job market was on fire, and I don't necessarily regret it (after all, my salary tripled during this time). But I know how it looks.