How bad does job hopping look on a resume?

CPT Lawrence Cable
Although we phrased it differently, we are giving the same advice.

A lot to unpack in your first sentence, and a number of determinations. Are you covered by a bargaining unit? Does the W.A.R.N Act apply? Are your fingers sticky? Did those fingers touch where they oughtened? And sometimes you run into piss poor management. In any case does their poor ethics excuse yours?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I know of no state where you can walk someone out following them giving notice without some level of payout - usually two weeks. As far as the management, sales, IT positions, most EE handbooks ask that you give some amount of termination notice. 1 week, 2 weeks, etc. Particularly in those mentioned positions, I always advised paying them out and getting them out. There is too much exposure with IS systems, contracts, etc. If you don't walk them out, at a minimum, critical access should be minimized. And be prepared to justify that. Whether you like them or not, you have to be consistent or hire extra lawyers to deal with EEOC and/state labor boards.

Up in the c-suite it is different, but for those of us who actually have a working laptop on our desks , any company. of any size (forget those 100, 50, 25 employee rules) will have a hiring team of 3+ - HR wienie, affected manager and whoever else can still fog a mirror. Why? These days, every management action must assume a lawsuit.

CWO4 Terrence Clark - In any state that has no Right to Work laws, employment is At Will. That essentially means that they don't have to have a reason to terminate you and there is no requirement to payout anything but you last paycheck and any unused vacation time. I understand all of the whys of the employers wanting notice, but since they aren't held to those same standards, unless you are a union member, my concerns for them has gotten less and less. The office where my wife worked outsourced the complete business office. They became aware of it when they handed them boxes and their remaining vacation and told to clear their desk and leave. But I've known businesses
that closed and the first the employees knew of it was when they got to work and the doors were looked.
Like I said, I've been on that side and know what HR is supposed to do. Still, I don't think I've interviewed with a "Hiring" team member since I was 28, always interviewed with senior management. OTOH, my long term assessment of modern Corporate Management is that it's extremely top heavy, over paid and produces nothing. On the production/sales side of things, upper management is often the anti sales/production team.
If you were asking if I had changed jobs because of any legal difficulties, the answer would be no, although I've had a number of Management Members lose theirs because of it. The easiest place to steal is Management. No, my most contentious job change came after the Regional Manager arbitrarily changed my job and compensation package three days in a row, not in my favor, and seemed truly shocked when I told him to go F*** himself. That was one of the more stupid management moves I had seen, he busted up a team of three of us that was responsible for 11 million dollars in business, half of it with new customers.

CPT Lawrence Cable
Wasn't asking anything, just opining in generalities IRT SPC (Join to see) original question..
Specifics would take a multi volume epistle.
"Right to work" is often mis interpreted and often abused. It sounds great but has short teeth. Actually protects the employee more than mgmt. Mgrs who arbitrarily pull the plug believing right to work is protective, often put themselves in the cross hairs of EEOC, state labor boards, and unemployment compensation at a minimum. The reason there is all those things is poor mgmt. The reason there are waaaaay to many HR wienies is because of those organizations, which is because of poor mgmt. The reason labor unions get successful card checks is because the HR wienies took the lazy road to petty bureaucratdom and ignored poor mgmt.

I've often said I've been down sized, right sized, out sourced and fired. Little hyperbolic, never fired. Never helps to carry any negativity into next job. Just pull your britches up and smell the roses.

CWO4 Terrence Clark - I understand that part too. Workers Comp and Unemployment boards aren't big advocates for the workers in my experience ( you don't want to go near unemployment now), but yes, they can help if the manager is lazy and didn't provide some chain of documentation.
I may be right sized now. The management of this company is three people. The best part is that they seem to understand that the majority of us here know our jobs better than they ever will and let us do them.

Exactly, everyone half their worth in the hiring decision process will read between the lines of a resume. Is it job/company jumping because they as an employee suck, or is it a series of progressions or lateral moves into a different line of work? An alibi could also be given for an extremely volatile industry with weak job stability.

It all depends............

From my observation a series of jobs of less than 2 years at the same level and similar duties screams Red Flag. Every single time I've seen a dirt bag employee finally leave a position their resume has them doing the same thing over and over again, and not making it to the 2 year mark.

I figure, one is given the first year (at most) as a honeymoon period, and if they haven't settled into a performance level of stability by then the writing on the wall starts to be legible, and they don't make it to year 2.

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It's what makes a military resume make us all look stellar in the private sector. We can frame it many ways to our favor. The biggest one it looks like we have been at a single employer for many years. Whereas, a PCS move, or MOS change is effectively an entirely new employer in most other contexts.

Non veterans are at a huge disadvantage when evaluating a resume with significant military service. So live it up.