They learn as a community, not just about technology . . . Migrating from company to company is easier, moreover, when people maintain close ties with former colleagues. Several years later, Chatterjee met up again with Homer, who had just joined Netscape. Everybody knows everybody. It's still a formality.
Individuals clearly aim to profit when they job-hop.
People want to hit a rising star to stock options, get a lot of money and retire. But job switches also involve a constant search for hot technology, Bonheim said. And they provide new opportunities to learn and, eventually, to run your own show. There, he recalls working hard to eke out profits in a well-established market. Last October, he joined WebTV, which is building technology that turns television sets into tools for surfing the Internet and handling electronic mail.