Question: After graduating from university in the UK, I have heard multiple careers advisors say that it is inadvisable to leave your first career role before you have gained at least two years experience.

However I feel my current role is currently holding back my career progress as I am unable to properly learn industry standard technologies, and is affecting my health due to unbearable amount of stress caused by poor management.

I have worked nearly a year and a half at this company but it is still my first career job. Will this look bad to future employers? I work in a sector that currently has lots of job opportunities.

Answer: 
As with any rule of thumb, it's a rough guideline. It's very unlikely that anyone is going to categorically reject an applicant if their first job lasted 18 months rather than 24 months. On the other hand, short stays (where "short stay" is highly dependent on the type of job, the location, the local norms, etc.) certainly don't look good to future employers since it makes future employers suspect that you'll be leaving the new job relatively quickly. 

Depending on the type of job, it can also mean that you've missed out on certain aspects of the job. For example, since your profile indicates that you may be a developer, in software development, you generally need to be in a role for a few years before you're in a position that you're trying to support a bunch of code that you wrote long enough ego to have forgotten lots of the details where you really learn which shortcuts you kick yourself for taking and which frameworks you made way more complicated than they needed to be. That sort of feedback loop is an important part of the learning process for new developers. You sometimes hear people talk about folks that "got 1 year of experience 5 times" rather than getting 5 years of experience. They're often referring to people that didn't stick around long enough to really do a lot of support of code they wrote and who therefore didn't learn a lot of lessons that you would expect someone with 5 years of experience to have.

If you do decide to look for other opportunities, I'd suggest that you be careful to only accept a position that you're willing to stay in for a while. Most people are willing to overlook a single short stint (particularly where the employer is known to be problematic). If you accumulate two or three short stays, however, you're creating a pattern that future employers are unlikely to ignore.
If someone is willing to offer you a better job, then you should take it. However, you need to make sure your next position is better.

> 
> unable to properly learn industry standard technologies,
> 
> 
> 

Be a little more diligent during the interview process and ask questions not just about what they use, but why they use it. Do they offer training? What processes to they use and how will you know if they really follow them? Are there good mentors?

> 
> and is affecting my health due to unbearable amount of stress caused
>  by poor management.
> 
> 
> 

This is going to be difficult to make sure your next job doesn't have poor management or something else you're not able to cope with. Maybe there are some telltale signs you've discovered in this job that you can recognize in the next. 

You should consider networking with other developers in your area and get some inside information on how various companies and teams operate. You may find that most have problems in one form or another, so why hinder your career by leaving a job too soon only to take another one that is just as bad.