No, you're not wrong, and are even downplaying how seriously disruptive a serial job hopper is to a company. I have without regrets red-flagged numerous well-qualified candidates who were an obvious flight risk at the companies I have worked at, which were always smallish. Now that big tech is contracting its ranks somewhat, this behavior is going to be even more suspect, because they will not have that refuge so easily, and I think it's for the best that we have more pressure to curtail it industry wide.
I don't begrudge people for having good reasons to justify their job switches (e.g., wanted a manager role, and was told none would be forthcoming in the future), but e.g. "I got bored doing React and I wanted try Vue on the MEAN stack" does not bode well for the projects left in the lurch when he gets bored at my workplace.
There's a nugget of truth in what you're saying: it is a valid expectation that knowledge workers be adequately stimulated. But we're not gonna start adding the latest flavor of NoSQL just because it's been popular for 4 months in the tech blogosphere.
Speaking personally, I always want to give a technically promising candidate a chance to defend his job hopping, but rarely do I hear convincing reasons for sub 2 year stints unless it is something out of their control, like a spouse needing to move for work, or their whole department getting laid off.
I'll just second this based on my experience with software engineers. Most places I've worked your looking at at least 6 months before someone is starting to get enough familiarity with everything involved in the internal ecosystem (both technical and non) to really be productive and probably a year before they're starting to reach the productivity of their peers. So if someone leaves at 2 years you've probably gotten one of something resembling their full productivity. Less than that and there's a good chance your better off hiring the slightly less impressive candidate who will stick around for a few. Less than 6 months to a year you may be better off hiring no one.
In my last job I completed a project that had been backlogged for months within about two months of starting. It was still about 6 before I really felt like I had my feet under me, and definitely closer to the year mark before I really had a grasp of the full ecosystem and was operating at the level I'd expect to be. Admittedly this was a larger organization with around 10-15 engineering teams all managing services that had to interact. The numbers I mentioned weren't a hard-fast universal rule, more a rough guideline from the environments I've been both an IC and manager in.
I 100% agree lack of fit can absolutely be a reason to leave in < 6 months. One or two of these wouldn't be a concern, however I've seen resumes of people who have been in the industry 8 years, with the average stint being between 6-8 months and none over 2-years. I'll probably pass on this candidate, even if they otherwise look better than my next choice. Sure they might make "significant changes" in the 6 months they are here, but I'll almost certainly be better off in the long run with the person who sticks around long enough to have something resembling deep knowledge of our environment. If they have had a "lack of fit" with that many previous managers, I have no reason to believe I'll be the one they finally click with.
Surely this is the baseline? If you hadn't contributed significant changes in the first three months and I was your line manager I probably would have failed your probation. I wouldn't expect you to be at maximum productivity by this point but I would be expecting you to make substantive contributions appropriate to your skill level and experience within this time.
I am baffled by this. It has to be so different between fields and companies.
At 2nd job it took 5 months until the first commit. At my 3rd like 4 months.
Getting up to speed and not being a net time sink for the coworkers, like 8 months on my 2nd job even though I did kinda the same thing in my first job. About 5 months at my third job.
This also make me have a hard time understanding how job hoppers are valued at all.
But reading your comment I realize some companies work completely differently.
At my last job I had a small bugfix (a one liner but still a bug) committed on my first day, PRed and merged by the end of my second day. That job was the definition of hit the ground running but still. Damn.
After a while its not just money, if you like your work, your manager and your teammates, have a good work life balance, it does not make sense to jump just for money.
In my experience, mercenaries are never satisfied with their pay, they always want more. While I care about pay, I have also cared about a few other things: who do I work with and what can I learn from them, what type of work is it, location, company goals, etc. It is ironic, but I think if you optimize money by just focusing on money, you will fall short of what is achievable.
Some companies will take a chance on you again, depending on their needs. Just not everyone.
I once reviewed a resume where someone literally had a 30 year career when their longest stint was 14 months with several stints of 2-6 months each. Not exaggerating. I passed on the candidate myself, but the last 20 or so companies who hired him were willing to take their chances.
I also once interviewed someone else much more jr who looked like a serial job hopper. During the interview he had a very good explanation for it which eased my concerns literally 100%. This was like 4 years ago and he's still onboard.
At a previous employer we hired someone who had a 15 year job history where he left every employer like clockwork every 14-16 months. We hired him anyway because he had a specific skill we were looking for.
And, yeah, sometimes people with a string of bad luck will begrudgingly grind out a couple years somewhere they'd prefer not to be to better help their future career prospects. It's REALLY not the worst thing in the world.
I don't begrudge people for having good reasons to justify their job switches (e.g., wanted a manager role, and was told none would be forthcoming in the future), but e.g. "I got bored doing React and I wanted try Vue on the MEAN stack" does not bode well for the projects left in the lurch when he gets bored at my workplace.