its a good question - how long should you stay at any one office straight out of school.
my thoughts are that it is good to get varied experience early on, it's normally easier financially and personally to organise straight out of school and you get to discover what it is you want to do in this profession.

for the record, after school i worked at an office
in australia for 1 year,
then 1 year in germany,
and now for the last 4 years at one office in the netherlands.

when i went for my last job interview at the current office, they seemed happy i had moved around a bit.
personally i am happy where i am now, i feel i have had some other experiences to base that conclusion on. you gotta know when to stop moving on hoping that the grass is greener.

I once was told by a principle that he rarely looked at potential employees who had less than 1 year of experience at any given office. He said the reason for this was that in shorter than a year, one would be unable to fully realise a project from start to finish.

In my experience what they want to see is how you changed over the time you were at a firm.

My first was only 6 months- I really don't get many comments on it, people act as if it isn't there.

My second was a year and a half- This gets the most attention, because in that year and a half I did whole projects solo and contributed on some tricky/complex/big projects.

I am just reaching the end of the 3 years out of school- I went from Intern to Project Manager in my current firm in 6 months because they quickly saw how much real experience was gained in the 1.5 years previous.

So if you have a lot of small jobs, focus on what you accomplished. I find it hard to believe that anyone these days can complete IDP at a single firm, unless it is quick the pro-active firm (I haven't met anyone who works for one of these yet).

Chili has a good point. I was lucky to have finished lots of TI and Residential projects in less than a year. What I didn't finish were any humongous projects from beginning to end, and some firms would like to see that even if they know you were just the cadmonkey.

j

I agree that job hopping looks bad, but it is also often the fastest way to get raises in this profession. For the record, I've been at my two jobs for two years a piece, enough time to make a meaningful contribution.

I spent my first three years at a single firm and then moved onto the next right about at the anniversary time. And was able to finish up IDP at that first place.

My guess is that working at one place for 6 months or so isn't a terrible thing. Sometimes the employee and employer don't fit. However if you have several less than one year employment stints I'd look at it like job hopping.

I worked at the first place out of school for about 3 years and still never worked on a project from start to finish. But that tells you more about the firm heirarchy where I was the lowest on the totem pole and basically the in-house temp.

first job was laid off after three years.
second job i just realized i didn't want to be there after 8 months and
didn't repeat the same mistake of staying as i did at the first job.
third job i left cause i was moving to nyc.
fourth job i was a consultant for 8 months
fifth job i was a consultant for a year and change
and now i'm workin at another job where i've been for a year and change

overall about 10 years..but noone's seemed to be too worried about why
i've moved around. i think early on it's best to stay at one job for a
good period of time..just to gain experience, finish your idp and get
established so that you have work so you can move on to the next
place. as long as there are good reasons for leaving i don't know why
there'd be a problem.

I agree hopping looks bad and is not a sign that you are serious about completing any given project you start. If its out of your control that's a different issue.