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You should stay in a job as long as you want to work for someone else and make them a lot more money than they pay you.

You should work for yourself.

It depends. If you are paid well and feel you are enjoying your job then 10 years or more.

If you aren’t paid market wages or don’t like the job/management then always be looking. It’s easier to find a new job while you already have one. Recruiters see red flags of you jump around too much without a good reason.

The main part is don’t get complacent, put your resume on LinkedIn and recruiters will reach out. That’s how I got my last job making bank, I was casually looking and someone contacted me.

I have moved around quite a bit the past 10 years, but each step my salary has jumped quite a bit.

Until you can find a better offer or until you can retire.

2 to 3 years and zig zag even if youre corporate

2 to 3 years

Once you're in a comfortable income bracket, quality of life is most important. Great hours, zero feelings of contempt, a short commute, and shit like that are more important than a 5% raise somewhere else.

If you're young and single and broke, always be looking for the next better thing even if you do want to kill everyone.

That depends on the person. However, you should be doing a self-assessment every three to six months to update your resume with new experiences, certifications, education, training, and other accomplishments. It'll likely be the best way to help spot self stagnation with your employer. Once you notice the stagnation, it maybe necessary to find out if you're still interested in working in that field, role, or doing something else entirely.

Until you're 18 if you're slow.

Until you hate it.

I get it, we all have to feed our families and buy things but at some point it just isn't worth it.

There is no general rule that is useful here.

Perhaps other than: stay in a job as long as it is (a) presently more valuable to you than other accessible jobs and (b) it is highly probable that it will continue to be more valuable to you than another accessible job. Considerations like the closeness and loyalty you have with your team and superiors, and the evidence you have for how your company treats employees as their tenure increases, should all contribute.

It can be hard to quantify the overall present value of a job (either your current one or another role) because your examples--typically other people who are doing the role you're considering--may have different outcomes than you do in the same role. (This is something that liberal HR culture fails to understand and appreciate. For example, my brother has a job he has been doing for just under two years. He is earning substantially more than some people who have been doing it for ten years because he (i) does it better and (ii) negotiates his pay and generally knows how to leverage his situation.) The reasons for valuing a job aren't only quantitative: jobs can ruin your relationships. So, you also have to decide what your priorities are.

Some industries seem to (quite irrationally, I think) reward job-hopping. I'm not convinced this is a good practice in itself. The decision context should actually favor the choice to change jobs, rather than people changing jobs as a general long-term strategy. But this depends on your industry. If you are applying for a builders job, it probably won't look good if you hopped crews constantly. A lot depends on trajectory: were you consistently getting better jobs? A bunch of lateral hopping is probably not advisable. I equate this burgeoning attitude in hiring with the feminization of business. In days long gone, loyalty was valued. Now, the more companies that say "yes" to hiring you appears to be a valuable metric, similar to women valuing a man that gets more women (regardless of how long he stays with them).

There is no value in remaining at a job that is disvaluable relative to another accessible opportunity. E.g., if the current pay structure and incentives outlook look like shit over time, you have no loyalty to your team or superiors, and/or the security of the position or your ability to progress appear compromised.