I dunno, if I make a list of leaders I've worked with that I'd want to hire if I started my own thing... I'm sure keeping the machine alive and the paychecks flowing was near the top of their priority list, but most of their decisions seemed motivated by other things.
Improve safety for the users. Preserve the sanity of the ops team. Start actually competing for our business instead of relying on relationships with politicians. That sort of thing.
Most often these hireworthy behaviors correlate with bringing value to the business, but sometimes the business's values need correcting.
Right, but these are value adds to the business, rather than personal career goals, which is what I’m getting at (a business will assess your worth not on your career goals but what you are worth to the business, and personal career goals aren’t a great measure of that, unless you can craft such goals very carefully).
I guess I'm trying to saying that you should craft your goals that way. And if accomplishing your goals doesn't also count as adding value to the business, you should go find a company where it does.
I realize this is an abnormal perspective, but I think it's important.
I spent seven years at a company whose main talent was finding ways to sell software that nobody would use (fewer bugs that way). We would build relationships with politicians who needed to spend their budget in order to have it renewed next year at the same size, and sell them something that claimed to do whatever made them look good.
It took us lowly engineers a long time to find out what was going on, but one day somebody actually tried to use it and you could tell from the bugs that nobody before them had ever managed to make it work.
Corrupting politicians is profitable. It adds value to the business. Creating an R&D group to actually drive the industry forward? That's risky, and in the end, less profitable. But I respect the hell out of the people who managed to do it, business value be damned, and would hire them to smack me around from time to time if I were a CEO.
Also I don't think anyone will outright reject you for staying too long at one company.
What they'll do is see it as a red flag and dig into it and find out what the circumstances were. If they feel those circumstances are ok, then you're fine. If they feel they were not ok, then you'll get dinged.
Versus back when I started my career, it would have been a universally positive indicator, that would score you points over a "job hopper". Nowadays it seems the job hopper is in a better position.
If he can describe how he was meeting his career goals while also staying in the same position for nine years, then there's no reason to avoid him.
But if he spent the last six years stagnating, it might be worth giving extra scrutiny to how up-to-date his skillset is.