Is Job Hopping Bad When It's for Good Reasons?

You are still in your early 20's, right? I would not worry about it too much.It is not unusual to try things out early in your career, and you needed to take what you could get at the time to get started. Yes, you're going to be judged as a "job-hopper" until you stabilize your job history. This will limit some opportunities at large companies with very rigid selection criteria or smaller companies with hiring managers who have particular expectations about the job history of new hires.Everyone has different "red flags", and exceptions are made all the time. You might have to try harder, but you are not doomed.

The flip side of your employment history is that you've seen a few different environments including some bad ones. If you learned the right lessons, it means you will appreciate and thrive in an environment that's not dysfunctional

I've been a programmer for 3 years professionally, jumping straight from dropping out of college with an irrelevant major into web development, which led to a series of job hops when I was still in my very early twenties (since age 19).

On average, I've held down a job for about 9 months, with a total of 4 jobs.

I left the first one because it was cooking the books and practiced envelope salaries with no written contracts,

the second one because I jumped above board with my junior skill-set and wasn't able to meet goals (this seems to cause a lot of confusion - I stayed for 8 months total, with 6 months of good performance, then a personal crisis hit and I wasn't able to meet goals despite management support - they reached out and were ready to help, but I just let them down),

the third one because of mismanagement by middle management and my lack of social awareness (a really nice startup idea died because of bad architecture I didn't speak out against due to lack of experience-backed authority),

the fourth one due to ethical concerns about unfair competition,

and the current one, which I'll soon be clocking a year in, and staying a while longer regardless, because I plan to move countries due to serious political instability - originally, I was going to stay here for several years, but with the current political climate in my country I cannot risk it.

Now, to me, 5 jobs in 3 years seems like a red flag to HR personnel - but I believe that all (except the second) job hops were more than appropriate given the circumstances. Will such a history rightfully risk putting me in a bad light before international employers? This sort of commitment on both sides feels a lot more serious than any domestic job.

I'm considering countries like the UK, USA, Australia. The latter especially has a good program for skilled immigration that I seem to qualify for.

·OTHER ANSWER:

I've been a programmer for 3 years professionally, jumping straight from dropping out of college with an irrelevant major into web development, which led to a series of job hops when I was still in my very early twenties (since age 19).

On average, I've held down a job for about 9 months, with a total of 4 jobs.

I left the first one because it was cooking the books and practiced envelope salaries with no written contracts,

the second one because I jumped above board with my junior skill-set and wasn't able to meet goals (this seems to cause a lot of confusion - I stayed for 8 months total, with 6 months of good performance, then a personal crisis hit and I wasn't able to meet goals despite management support - they reached out and were ready to help, but I just let them down),

the third one because of mismanagement by middle management and my lack of social awareness (a really nice startup idea died because of bad architecture I didn't speak out against due to lack of experience-backed authority),

the fourth one due to ethical concerns about unfair competition,

and the current one, which I'll soon be clocking a year in, and staying a while longer regardless, because I plan to move countries due to serious political instability - originally, I was going to stay here for several years, but with the current political climate in my country I cannot risk it.

Now, to me, 5 jobs in 3 years seems like a red flag to HR personnel - but I believe that all (except the second) job hops were more than appropriate given the circumstances. Will such a history rightfully risk putting me in a bad light before international employers? This sort of commitment on both sides feels a lot more serious than any domestic job.

I'm considering countries like the UK, USA, Australia. The latter especially has a good program for skilled immigration that I seem to qualify for.