Job Duration

After spending one month looking for a job in my new city, I've finally found one. It's actually not that hard to find work, there are options literally everywhere. The problem is that most of them aren't good. I didn't want to get just any random job with long hours and a low salary, otherwise, I could've found work in less than a week. But of course, I wouldn't want to stay in any of those jobs for long, so it would be pointless to even start.

In the end, I managed to get a job as a surveillance operator in a big company. I'm going to start working there in two weeks, and I'm very excited about it! I intend to keep working as an English teacher (after all, I like teaching) but it'll no longer be my main source of income, it's only going to be something that I do in my free time. But even though my new job has a good salary and is something that I'll probably enjoy, I found myself thinking, "How long will I stay in this job?".

You may or may not know that I don't like to stay in one place for too long, I'm constantly moving from one place to the next. But at the same time, it may be difficult to find another opportunity like this elsewhere, so I have to make the most of it. Before we can solve this dilemma, let's stop talking about me and consider the broader subject.

It's not a good idea to stay in the same job for your whole life because you'll never grow that way. You're not going to get a better job if you're not willing to leave your current one, as I always say, without change, there can be no progress. But at the same time, it's not a good idea to change jobs every month, because you'll never gain experience and you'll spend more time looking for new jobs than actually working.

So, what would be the ideal amount of time to stay in a job? To answer this question, we must understand that when we talk about work, we're talking about finances, because the main reason we go to work is to make money. In other words, this is not a philosophical problem, it's a math problem. Therefore, I decided to create an equation:

$$t = \frac{S}{M_w} \cdot y$$

It may look difficult, but it's actually very simple: t stands for the time you should stay at the job, S is your salary, Mw is the minimum wage, and y represents one year.

So, the time you should stay in a job is equal to the salary divided by the minimum wage in years. What that means is that if the salary is equal to the minimum wage, you should only stay one year before moving on to a better job. If the salary is twice the minimum wage, you should stay for two years; if it's three times, stay for three years, and so on.

And what if you get a raise? In this case, you can recalculate using the same equation and then subtract the time you have already worked there. Of course, this is just an approximation, if the time is up but you still haven't found a better job, you should stick with the one you have for a bit longer. If you get a better job offer before the time ends, there's no need to wait, leave your current job right away. What really matters is that you make the choice that's best for you and for your future.

Now let's get back to my situation: how long should I stay in this new job? Based on my equation, the answer is almost exactly 2 years. So, if I don't get a promotion by then, I'm going to leave this job on February 1st, 2028.