Depends entirely on what the job is.

Is the 42 year old a welder? Then 48 different jobs might mean they're in super high demand and contract out to high paying, low time frame jobs.

Is the 42 year old a cop or a priest? Probably skips town a lot for... reasons...

Most any other job might just mean they've had an interesting life and like to try new things. Their broad experience might mean they're great for what they're currently doing.

"Cool, tell me about them. Sounds like an interesting life."

why would i need an opinion on that?

Make friends with the guy. He's got some some stories. True or not, he's got some stories.

I was up to 14 at age 25. When you're young and inexperienced, any schmuck that will pay you and be slightly less abusive than the last guy is worth working for, and you never owe the last person anything.

Gen-X in tech here. When I was about to enter the workforce we were told that having multiple jobs in our resume or showing that we stayed at a job less than five years was really bad and would make us difficult to hire because it showed that we couldn't be depended on.

Fuck that!

I switched jobs all the time as I chased higher salaries and bigger benefits. If they wanted my skills they needed to pay me AND they needed to guarantee me at least two off-site training programs per year. All that training and experience in different technologies and environments made me more and more valuable until my only option was to go into consulting so that multiple clients could benefit at once and none need to commit to paying me beyond the scope of their project.

"That's so cool man. What was the weirdest one?"

There's not enough context here to have a strong opinion, but I'll add that personally, nothing has given me a bigger raise than getting a job at another company.

The weird thing is "confessing" about it no?

I've had 50. It depends on the person and the jobs.

Some jobs are minimum wage BS jobs that people are doing just to stay alive, if you burn out on a BS job in 6 weeks that's nothing to be ashamed of.

I also typically have worked multiple jobs at the same time. I've had two full-time jobs and a part-time job while going to school and not sleeping for more than 5 hours a night for like 9 months.

Are you going to hold that against me, or does it show that I have the drive and initiative to accomplish my goals no matter how difficult they may be?

Sure, I bounced between jobs a lot when I was in my teenage years and my early twenties, but once I hit college and built a career and my employment history has been Rock fucking solid, typically 3+ years between job changes.

I would say that my last 14 years of employment weighs a lot more heavily than my first 5 years of employment.

"Welcome aboard, Johnny Sins"

That the person probably won't stick around for long. I'd still give them a fair chance, but if they up and quit one day out of nowhere I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not in charge of the hiring though, so I just work with whoever I'm told to work with.

"neat." then I go back to doing my job

That's going to depend a lot on context. Did he travel the world for five years, working a different temporary job at each stop? Or did he repeatedly get fired for pissing in the boss' in-tray?

Just work your shift

I don't judge others based on their slave~~r~~ records.

I don’t correlate much from job count. I have had 5 in the last 8 years, two of those following layoffs. Shit happens.

What's wrong with that? If you only find 3 months jobs you end up that way. And if you sprinkle some 1 week jobs the count rises very fast.

I'm 38 and I've had about half of that, but the vast majority was from 16-25. They were all shitty retail things or short term odd job type things, but work is work so I include them if someone asks how many jobs I've had except on a resume of course. I just stick to relevant things there.

I've done everything from retail, to refrigeration diagnostic work. From wiping ass and giving meds, to even being a carnie. The only type of jobs I've never had are "real people jobs" like office work. I'm just a subhuman meat machine.

Let's judge him for doing something different, while being too afraid of doing the same.

I’d say it is none of my business what they did for employment prior to where they are now and stay out of their life.

Maybe he worked a few years at a temp agency?

Depends on the job, but it would be a red flag for my career as projects usually last for at least a year.

I would assume they were exaggerating and/or were a consultant at some point.

My opinion is only that I'm not going to get attached, guy's probably not going to be here long. That's all.

Not my problem, tell me more

Just had a talk about this exact topic in an interviewer today. Talked about how a growing number of companies on my resume no longer exist, and the guy interviewing me said he had the same thing. It's a rough business world we live in. I'm not gonna hold the number of jobs a person has had against them. In fact, it speaks of experience. Not deep, but certainly wide.

By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn't seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

Rookie numbers. Gotta pump those numbers up!

Nice to meet you, Mark. What’s the longest you’ve stayed at any one job, Mike? So tell me, Matt, do you have any friends from previous jobs, or just forget their names?

Impressive. I'm only up to a dozen or so, would be more, but Verizon was worth sticking around for 10 years. Other than that, my record is two or three years.