That's a fair point, but with this approach one is left with a gap of unemployment in their CV. Unfortunately, even in today's economic climate, a gap in your CV is still seen as a negative to many employers.
For software developers the "CV gap" problem (if it really is a problem) seems easily solvable to me: do a little freelancing, and put that in the gap.
Last day at X could have been 12/31/2004, last day at Y could have been 1/1/2009, first day at Z could have been 12/31/2009, but no 'suddenly suspicious gap' shows?
This is what I do. No one has ever asked me to clarify start and end dates.
That said, I'll never just up and quit a job now. Did it once, and those were some of the most stressful months of my life. No matter how crappy a job is, it doesn't compare to watching your hard-earned savings decline and facing the real, terrifying possibility that you won't make rent/mortgage payments.
Along the lines of what PG said yesterday (which I commented on) regarding telling smallish lies (had to do with getting funded and how investors jump to conclusions) this is probably a case of "turnabout is fair play, eh".
In other words if the person reading the resume is going to read (incorrectly) into the situation and penalize you for leaving it's ok to fib a bit in order to prevent them from having that wrong impression (which you can't correct if you don't get the interview).. A case of who draws first blood.
I've never had anyone ask about the gaps in my CV. Never. I've been unemployed after the dotcom crash. Nobody cares. Last year I messed about on some of my own stuff. Everybody thinks it's fine. They just want to hire me.
Admittedly it's possible that my CV looks a lot more attractive than the average CV, but personally I wouldn't know why. It's possible the job market in Netherland is better than in the US, though.
