If you’ve stayed with a company for 10+ years, what kept you there?

Prior to my current position, I was at two major universities. I stay here as I am surrounded by and work daily with many really smart and dedicated colleagues, a high level of diversity, generous training offerings, and many outreach opportunities throughout the public sector, including other states. Also, my mindset leans to using my skills for making things better for all citizens.

I have been at the same company now for over 25 years, and the reason I have stayed is that my role has always evolved over time and the company is continually growing so makes it fun and interesting. As people have said, when the change outside your company is greater than inside then the end is near!

At first is was the new learning experiences, culture and people I worked with.  It was fun.  I literally didn't need to set an alarm clock.  I would rush into work because I had so much fun doing my job.  The people work some of the smartest people on the planet and I learned something new almost every single day.  Learning was probably the strongest aspect.  The people and culture were also key.  It stayed that way for 2/3's of my career there.  Then we were acquired by a 130k person company (we were about 4k)   It started going downhill from there.  The people work ok, but the working environment became more challenging.  The alarm clock became necessary.  The work became more rote.  Very little creativity allowed.  In the final 6 years of being there, it was only the compensation that kept me going.  I would do it all again, but would hope a different company would purchase us instead.

I've got a 31-year career and I started at Sun Microsystems on the manufacturing floor, doing component-level debugs of hardware. When I landed that job, I'd basically gone to a trade school and had an associate's degree in electronics. I had no idea what Silicon Valley was and I didn't know Unix at all. So I came into the manufacturing floor and learned from there, which is why I always say I went to the university of Sun Microsystems.

I did 17 years there and I was going to be a lifer because I just loved the environment and culture. It was always innovative and looking at new things. I was always involved in cool projects with opportunities to learn something and push myself further.