3 tech CEOs who never left their first big job: Here’s what data says

John Ternus, Apple's incoming CEO, has worked at exactly one company since graduating college in 1997. Satya Nadella joined Microsoft two years after his master's degree.

Andy Jassy spent 24 years at Amazon before reaching the top job. Three of tech's most powerful companies are run by people who never really left.

Over the past three decades, career guidance has instead preached that loyalty is a weakness and job hopping is the way to advance. This was established as big businesses moved away from employment guarantees in the 1980s and '90s.

However, the numbers behind this narrative paint a different picture. The quit rate has not increased in relation to 25 years ago, the rate of layoffs has even fallen, and the boom in freelancers that was expected has not really happened.

A 2024 analysis by Wharton's Peter Cappelli and coauthors, examining the top 10 executives at each Fortune 100 company, found the average executive worked at just three employers across the 28 years it took to reach the top and had already spent 13 years at their current company before entering the C-suite.

Below the executive suite, the pattern holds even more strongly. Research on Finnish workers found that moving into a more senior role was almost six times more likely to happen through an internal promotion than a move to a different company.

The logic is straightforward from an employer's side: handing someone significantly more responsibility is a risk, and companies take that risk more readily on people whose work they already know well.

By comparison, external hires often use their initial period on the job just to get used to how the company really operates.

None of this is to say that changing jobs is always the wrong choice. Individuals who are unhappy in their position need to quit anyway, and early movement around within your career is one of the best ways to discover what type of work you enjoy.

Recruiters become skeptical of those who have spent too long at any one firm – usually more than a decade.