Not necessarily "keep the fire", but one big piece of advice I'd give anyone here - don't stay at any given company more than five years, tops. Three to five ye

Not necessarily "keep the fire", but one big piece of advice I'd give anyone here - don't stay at any given company more than five years, tops. Three to five years is a good run for "permanent". I work in the Twin Cities, the Land of Fortune 500 Headquarters. It's a big enterprise town. What I've seen happen over and over is people become "lifers", working ten years or more in a single company, then they get laid off or fired and have no idea how to function in the current job market. Worse, their value is heavily invested in the institutional knowledge of their former employer, sometimes specialized to the point where it's useless outside of that company. This causes a lot of suffering. If you move on regularly, you'll keep interest more easily, see a broader cross-section of the industry, and not be so hosed if you find yourself laid off.