One time or even 1+ times...

There is a guy that left my employer 6 months ago and now I hear he is coming back...and this is not the first time he has pulled this off...

Is this normal?

I've not seen it personally happen, but I know some friends that have open offers from their previous employers to go back if what they're doing now doesn't work out for them. Probably means that they're a great employee if they keep getting that offer, and that they leave on good terms.

I think it is fairly normal, but I imagine it’s seen in varying levels depending on career/field. My company produces a monthly bulletin and if a new employee is hired and is also a former employee we put them in the bulletin and call them “repeat offenders.”

I have a different example for you… Ronnie Arrow coached men’s basketball for South Alabama from 1987-1995. He was unceremoniously dismissed, many felt unfairly. We hired him again in 2007 and he coached 2007-2012.

I've seen it if a person left on good terms. Sometimes circumstances change, or the position getting offered is better than what you had previously at that place.

I have personally never done this, but I see it all the time (we call them boomerangs). I can't say I've seen 6 months or it happening multiple times. I have heard people say "if the new job is not what you expected it to be, feel free to come back".

Typically it is people coming back after 1-2 years and they're pretty high performers. You don't see it as much before a year in IT because most big companies have signing bonuses with strings attached (aka you have to give the money back if you leave within a year). On the other side, you don't see boomerangs gone for more than 2 years frequently because the old company will start to forget the skills of that person.

My guess is you start seeing more and more of it because gen Z generally doesn't have loyalty to an employer (even moreso than millennials).

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Depends on why he left. If he kicks a** then it is what it is. Easy way to figure that out is did he get a promotion or raise to come back? I’ve had amazing offers to go back to my previous career or job or whatever. My boss was the source of much of the problem. Took some time for his boss to figure it out. [/align]

Well..

I worked for a company.

We had a guy who felt he deserved a promotion. The company didn't feel the same. So he quit coming to work. Company viewed him as an asset so they didn't terminate him.. After a few weeks he showed up, gave them his stuff and told them he was gone. No notice.. Went to a different company and had the position he wanted.

A couple months go by, and he's re-hired at that position. Things go well for about a month or two, and he demanded more money. Company reminded him he had just been re-hired at a higher position, all his benefits had picked up where he left off, and was near the top end of the salary for the position.

He stops coming to work again. Few weeks go by and he turns in his stuff and was gone.

Before I left the company they were beggin him to come back at the rate he wanted, but he wanted more.

I'm unsure what happened.

Not exactly what you are asking about, but I left a company that I did return to. I bought it. Fortunately, I didn't burn any bridges with any of the employees that were there when I left, so it worked out well for me. When I retired years later, I sold the company to a group of people that worked there.

As for the person you asked about, leave once on good terms and come back, ok. Leave twice and the door is permanently closed for any return.

It has happened a lot at my company but most of it was before I joined. One woman left while I was there and came back just a few months later. Turns out she was pregnant and our benefits were far better than the company she left ours for. So she comes back and is out a few months later on maternity leave. I thought that was shady AF but that was years ago and she's still with the company so I guess it all worked out for her and the company.

never done it myself. But there was an employee at my current company that left and came back twice. The 3rd time leaving was the last straw and boss told him he's not welcome back. This was over about 10 years or so.

I once worked at the same company 3 different times. Worked for them 12 years and then left them for 2 years, they hired me back, left them again for 2 more years, they hired me back and paid me more money, and this last time I left for what I hope is my final destination career wise. Keep in mind this was a small family oriented engineering company. I made sure to leave on good terms each time.

If there is one piece of advice I could give anyone. No matter how much you want to tell your employer to suck it on the way out the door....don't. NEVER burn your bridges. You never know when those same people will bail you out in the future.

I did. Moved away for 20 years. The person I trained to replace me retired and I came back to my hometown 20 years later and fell back into my old job.

(04-20-2022 04:32 PM)111App Wrote:  I did. Moved away for 20 years. The person I trained to replace me retired and I came back to my hometown 20 years later and fell back into my old job.

I'll throw a nugget out there.. sure it happens, I know it's not what you meant, but seasonal work comes to mind like our local Minor league baseball team. But yeah, if the employees left on good terms and whatever they were searching for didn't work out, I don't see why they wouldn't be welcomed back. That's why I always make sure to not burn bridges I may have to hop across later

There have been a couple of guys at my work that have done that. They all had good reasons for leaving and left on good terms. Their reasons were to be closer to home and another guy had a sick daughter and needed a more flexible schedule. They came back after the pandemic forced their new jobs to close down. Luckily for them we needed employees bad as we were getting slammed with work. So it all worked out.

I left my current employer for about two years on good terms and came back with no issues. They let me roll my previous seniority and time-in towards vesting and PTO. I work with a few other people who did the same thing. I don't think it's a particularly big deal as long as you don't burn any bridges or leave abruptly with a bunch of loose strings or unfished projects.