Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around 3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made me t

Your shelf-life so to speak at a potential opportunity is more averaged around 3.5-4 years. I'm not sure if you're open about this to employers but it made me think of a somewhat typical question of "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" "Anywhere but here!" is likely not the response they're looking for even though it would be entirely accurate. Personally, I don't really care. Our skillset and drive doesn't keep us in long, tenured positions. Having an upward ceiling of 5 years at any company is truly impressive. Most developers I know cap themselves at 1 or possibly 2 years. I wanted to bring this up primarily to highlight that if an employer of software developers is looking to retain talent for > 5 years they have an extremely hard road ahead of them. The number of Googlers (a random but high metric) that are still there after 5 years is probably much less than most of us think. I'm sure Google has the data to prove or disprove the theory but I'm not sure it's accessible to the public. That's not to say it can't be done but it shouldn't be the same push as other industries seem to require. Those industries tend to have skills that are highly specialized where that much knowledge gathered over time is not only prized but highly required. Our "knowledge cap" seems to reset quite often in comparison and our base understanding of "computer sciency things" tends to transcend the technology we're using those things on.