Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
Not Einstein

This is true for money, relationships and jobs and Morgan Housel stitches these together well by saying:

What’s easy to overlook is that networks and trust compound like any other asset, and every time you switch jobs or careers you reset the clock to some degree.

His advice is to stay put: Don’t switch fields or move on. However, Housel caveats this with the fact that it’s not universal advice but true at least half the time when you’re older.

But if the advice is true only half the time, how do you know when it’s not true anymore? Should you stay put?

Here’s one way I’ve been thinking about it: Your strategy could be to compound on relationships and trust, in which case it might make sense to stay put.

But your strategy might be different. It could be to compound knowledge or money. So what do you do if your strategy doesn’t line up with what your job has to offer at the moment?

You could try and resolve the conflict of interest by getting your current job to align with your priorities. For example, by asking to be placed on a different project in an attempt to enable the compounding of new knowledge.

But sometimes the energy it requires to get into this new orbit within your current space, is simply too high.

So what do you do? You move on; you let yourself get pulled into another orbit that requires less energy.

That’s it. It’s either that or you continue to invest in a job that is not optimal for you.

Like Nassim Taleb says, if you’re going to panic in investing, panic early. And Housel is right in saying that the same is true for your career – if you need to quit, quit early so whatever’s next has a shot at compounding.