Comment horsesh*t (Score 1) 227
Switching jobs actually makes you a better programmer. You'll work with different tech (or at least a different approach). Yes, you'll be learning things but it's not about being the best-of-the-best at your new company day 1. If you're new job has a good culture, they'll facilitate you committing to code very early on. Institutional knowledge isn't the same as industry knowledge.
It may feel like you don't know squat but trust me, you'll be better off for it. The trick is to know when to leave... If you join a company where your coworkers have never worked elsewhere, this is an opportunity to teach.
When working on a codebase or a large project, those that have been there a while will always know more than you do. This doesn't take away from your own skill sets at all but rather it proves that there are institutional knowledge that you haven't learned yet. Worse, it proves that they didn't follow standards which would allow someone with little knowledge of the codebase to contribute because of industry knowledge of the standards.
You are expected to not know how things are done when switching jobs. That's why your "new". But that doesn't take away from your own skill sets. If anything, you have the opportunity to leverage what you already know to make the new job better (or at least try to).