Got a note today identifying that my (adjusted) service time at my company has been 23 years. Cool.
Part of that is laziness (or, perhaps, a conservative desire to not change things that don’t need to be changed). Part of that is that I have a pretty good and fulfilling employer (and position), despite period kvetching. There have been times when I’ve done some looking elsewhere, but never found an opportunity I liked better (and usually the conditions that were driving it were reconciled fairly quickly).
I’m not sure where my career is going, long-term. I’m aware that in some areas longevity at a company is seen as a disadvantage, and certainly there are always concerns about lost opportunities for growth that new opportunities would have. But there are also some values I see to it, the institutional knowledge and web of relationships and the sense of being a part of a culture that has evolved over two and a half decades.
Anyway, 23 years. Go, me!
Referring to certain professors, my dad used to say, “He doesn’t have twenty years of teaching experience; he has one year of teaching experience twenty times.” What matters is not how many different thingies there are on your resume, but how you have developed as the years have gone by.
True enough. I know plenty of people who have been at the job 20 years and are simply drawing more vacation time than actually having improved in their profession. Others, on the other hand, have grown for that twenty years.
And, of course, they may simply be focusing their attention on other things.