The bitter tang of lukewarm coffee coating my tongue was a familiar companion on these calls. Not the rich, invigorating kind, but the forgotten mug, left too long on the desk, a silent testament to another departure. Another farewell Zoom, another colleague, barely known, heading for a ‘better opportunity.’ This was the sixth such call this quarter alone. The recycled ‘we’ll miss you’ platitudes felt flat, tasting like stale promises everyone knew would never ripen.

The ‘Tour of Duty’ Illusion

There’s a popular mantra echoing through modern professional spaces: the ‘tour of duty’ career. The idea is that you join a company, contribute intensely for a set period – say, eighteen months, sometimes twenty-six – then move on. It’s presented as agile, strategic, and empowering. A necessary adaptation to a rapidly changing world. And for a while, I bought into it, even advocated for it with the fierce enthusiasm of a convert. I saw it as the smart play, the only way to ensure growth and avoid stagnation. Who wants to be the person stuck in the same cubicle for twenty-six years, anyway?

But a nagging dissonance began to grow in my gut, much like the slow, unsettling realization that the bus I missed by ten seconds could have been the one that broke down, saving me an hour. What if this constant churn, this perpetual motion, was actually making us profoundly poorer in ways we hadn’t quantified? What if, in our relentless pursuit of novelty and perceived upward mobility, we were sacrificing something irreplaceable?

The Steep Cost of Constant Churn

The cost, it turns out, is steep. We are hemorrhaging institutional memory at an alarming rate. Knowledge workers, packed with highly specific context and nuanced understanding, exit, taking years of accrued wisdom with them. New hires spend countless weeks rediscovering solutions to problems that were solved ages ago. We lose deep mentorship, the kind that requires sustained presence and mutual investment, not just a six-week onboarding sprint. And perhaps most critically, we lose the profound satisfaction of long-term mastery, the slow, deliberate cultivation of expertise that only comes from wrestling with a challenge for years, not months. It feels like we’re building nothing that lasts.

This isn’t just about productivity; it’s about soul. It trains us to be perpetually dissatisfied, to always have one eye on the next horizon, never truly investing our whole selves in the present. We become consumers of jobs, rather than architects of careers. And the more I witness it, the more I’m convinced that this disposable career path mirrors the culture of fast fashion. We crave constant novelty, cheap thrills, and endless rotation, overlooking the enduring value of craftsmanship and quality that withstands the test of time.

Craftsmanship vs. Consumption

Take Stella S.K., a food stylist I once collaborated with on a high-stakes campaign for a boutique bakery. Stella was meticulously precise, a true artist. I watched her spend forty-six minutes arranging a single raspberry on a tart, adjusting its tilt by millimeters, then doing it again because the light shifted by an almost imperceptible degree. Her dedication was immense, her vision clear. But the agency, driven by quarterly targets and a rotating roster of talent, kept pushing for faster turnarounds, more ‘disruptive’ concepts. Stella was, to put it mildly, out of sync with their pace. They cycled through six different food stylists in just over a year, each bringing a fleeting aesthetic that never quite solidified into a coherent brand image.

Stella, on the other hand, eventually left the fast-paced agency world. She told me she was tired of her work being treated like a trend, something to be consumed and discarded. Her mistake, she admitted, was trying to fit her craft into a machine designed for speed over substance. She found a niche working with small, artisanal producers who valued her eye for detail and her ability to create visuals that conveyed a sense of timeless quality. She understood, intuitively, that true value wasn’t in fleeting trends but in the timeless elegance of elegant silk ties, in a perfectly baked sourdough, or in the enduring strength of a well-made wooden table – objects designed to be cherished, not replaced after six months.

The Hollow Victory of Breadth Over Depth

It’s a strange contradiction. We laud innovation, yet we dismantle the very foundations that allow deep, complex innovation to flourish. Companies benefit, yes, by keeping salaries lean through constant turnover and never having to truly invest in long-term employee development. But employees? We end up feeling like interchangeable parts, perpetually chasing a carrot that moves further away with every hop. We gain breadth, perhaps, a superficial understanding of six different industries, but rarely the depth that transforms experience into genuine expertise. We gain ‘networking’ connections, but often lack true professional relationships forged through shared struggle and triumph over a sustained period. It’s a hollow victory.

I’ve made my share of moves, too. There was a time when I thought every eighteen months was the absolute sweet spot for career advancement. I remember gleefully updating my LinkedIn profile, feeling a rush each time I added another logo. But the emptiness eventually crept in. I was good at starting, good at learning the lay of the land, but never excellent at deeply shaping it. Never really part of building something profound. I missed the camaraderie that deep roots foster, the inside jokes that span years, the implicit trust built through shared projects that went awry and were painstakingly brought back on track. I even missed the occasional, frustratingly familiar quirks of a system, because at least they were *known* quirks, not new mysteries to unravel every single time.

The Radical Act of Staying

What if, instead of constantly reaching for the next shinier thing, we paused? What if we acknowledged that not every problem needs a completely new solution, and that sometimes, the ‘old’ ways – the ways of enduring craftsmanship and deep investment – hold profound value? What if we dared to cultivate a sense of belonging, not just to a project, but to a collective endeavor that transcends individual tenures? This isn’t about advocating for stagnation. It’s about questioning the relentless pursuit of disposability and asking: what are we truly building if it’s designed to be discarded? Perhaps the most radical act in a culture of constant newness is to commit to the long haul, to cultivate, to nurture, and to stay. It’s a thought that resonates with a quiet power, unlike the fleeting echoes of another farewell call.