I'm in an area with lots of employers, but 20 years ago I did some job-hopping (four jobs in four years between 95 and 99), and that STILL comes up as a negative in job interviews. If you bail on too many bad managers, you can find yourself locked out anyway.
At this point you should just have a >20 years ago section on there (I would label it "prior history" myself), and include projects you worked on. That's over 20 years ago. Unless you worked on something you really want to highlight, just fudge them altogether.
I am guessing you don't work in tech in the US though? I was a bit worried about doing a third "three and out" while looking, and 10 years prior in finance, it may have been an issue, when I was looking at tech companies, no one even batted an eyelash. One HR recruiter even quipped that these would be relatively long tenures in the startup world.
Oh man, I know what you mean - it's kind of crazy. When I'm at a company for more then 2 years, recruiters start joking that I'm an old timer and must be dying for a change! I'm all for moving when the time is right, but I like my job and looking for a new one is stressful!
Why couldn't you just say you worked at 2 places and not 4? Do people really check that sort of thing? Or omit 3 and say you ran your own business for those 3 years. If employer is too dumb to understand your reasons, a little truth bending wouldn't hurt.
Why do you even have that on your resume? I’ve been working as a professional developer for 20+ years, but no one cares about my first job writing C code running on DEC VAX and Stratus mainframes or my second job doing a combination of VB6 and C++ DCOM and MFC.
