Latest / Job Hopping with Fexingo: Tenure, Loyalty, and the Modern Career Resume / How Three Years Became the New Career Sweet Spot
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this number that keeps popping up in career data lately — three years. Not two, not five. Three. Luna: Three years as the new sweet spot? I feel like I've been hearing more recruiters say that too. Lucas: Right — and the data is actually pretty striking. LinkedIn's 2025 workforce report tracked over ten million profiles and found that professionals who left a role between month 35 and month 40 — so right around three years — got an average salary bump of 14 to 18 percent. Compare that to people who left at the two-year mark, who got closer to 9 to 12 percent. Luna: That's a meaningful gap. So why the difference? What changes between year two and year three? Lucas: A couple things. First, by the third year you've usually completed at least one full business cycle — you've seen a project from planning through delivery through post-mortem. That completist narrative is very compelling to hiring managers. Second, you've built actual institutional knowledge — you're not just someone who's been there two years and is still learning the org chart. Luna: And I bet there's a reputation component too. A string of two-year stints can start to look like a pattern — like you're always ready to leave the second things get hard or boring. Lucas: Exactly. There's actually a name for it in recruiter circles — the 'two-year treadmill.' Someone who's never seen a single full product cycle or a full fiscal year of performance reviews. Meanwhile, someone who stays three years — that signals a different kind of loyalty. You stuck around long enough to contribute meaningfully, but you also left before you got too comfortable. Luna: I want to push back a little, though. Isn't this very industry-dependent? I can think of a lot of roles — especially in consulting or investment banking — where two years is the standard tenure and nobody blinks. Lucas: Great point. And you're right — in high-pressure, apprenticeship-style industries, two years is often the expected duration. But the data shows that even in those fields, people who stay an extra year tend to exit into more senior titles. A McKinsey engagement manager who leaves after three years is much more likely to land as a director at a client company than one who leaves after two. Luna: So it's not just about the salary bump — it's about the step-up in role. Lucas: Exactly. And this brings me to a specific case. I was looking at some Payscale data from last quarter — they tracked compensation trajectories for tech and marketing roles — and they found that the biggest earnings jump over a ten-year career came from people who had four jobs, each lasting three to four years. That group out-earned both the two-year jumpers and the five-year-plus stayers by a wide margin. Luna: Let me guess — the two-year jumpers hit a reputation ceiling around year six or seven, and the long-stayers got underpaid relative to market for a few years. Lucas: Bingo. The two-year jumpers, by their sixth career year, had four employers on their resume. Recruiters start to wonder if you can actually stick something out. And for the long-stayers — someone who stayed seven years at one company — they often missed two or three market-adjustment cycles, especially in a hot job market like we had in 2021 through early 2023. Luna: But I think there's a nuance here that doesn't get enough attention. The three-year rule works best when you're actually growing during those three years. If you plateau in month 18 and then coast for another 18 months, you're not building the narrative you think you are. Lucas: That is such an important caveat. A three-year stint where you did the same thing for two of those years is not a strong signal. The whole value proposition is that by month 36 you can say 'I took this role from launch to scale, I managed a team through two full planning cycles, I launched a product that generated X in revenue.' That only works if you actually had those experiences. Luna: And that's where self-assessment comes in. Before you decide to stay that third year, you need to ask: am I still learning? Am I still adding value at a new level? Or am I just doing the same thing cheaper than a new hire would? Lucas: All right — if today was actually useful to you, the reason these episodes stay ad-free is listener support. People who find value here can keep that going at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a big difference. Really helps us keep digging into data like this. Lucas: So back to that self-assessment question — Luna, you mentioned plateauing. Let me give you an example from the data. Payscale looked at marketing managers specifically and found that those who left between month 35 and month 40 had an average salary of 92,000 dollars. Those who left between month 24 and month 28? 78,000. That's an 18 percent gap for one extra year. Luna: Right — and that 78,000 group, they might have gotten a small bump from leaving earlier, but they lost out on the compounding effect. They took a lower base into their next role, and that lower base compounds over the next job hop too. Lucas: Exactly. The three-year move gives you a higher base, and if you do that twice, the difference is huge. Let's say you start at 60,000. If you jump every two years with a 10 percent bump, after six years you're at about 79,800. If you jump every three years with a 15 percent bump, you're at about 91,500. That's a difference of almost 12,000 dollars a year. Luna: And that's before you account for the title upgrade that often comes with a three-year stint. You're more likely to go from manager to senior manager, or from senior to director. Lucas: Right. And the title matters for your next move — it signals that someone promoted you, not just that you left before they could fire you. That institutional endorsement is powerful. Luna: Okay, so where does the three-year rule break down? I think of startups, where the whole concept of tenure is weird — a startup that's eighteen months old might have already gone through three pivots. Staying three years at a startup that doesn't last three years is a different equation. Lucas: Great point. And the data actually shows that for early-stage startups — under 50 employees — the optimal tenure is closer to 18 to 24 months. Because the company itself is evolving so fast that you get multiple cycles of experience in a short time. You might lead a product launch, then a fundraising round, then a team restructure — all in two years. Luna: So the rule isn't really about the calendar — it's about the density of experience. At a fast-moving startup, you can compress three years of experience into two. At a large, slow-moving company, you might need four years to get the same breadth. Lucas: That's a better way to frame it. The three-year rule is a heuristic for the average company. But the real principle is: stay long enough to have a meaningful accomplishment you can point to, but leave before your compensation gets stale or your learning curve flattens. Luna: And that leads to a framework I've heard some career coaches use — they call it the 'growth cliff.' The idea is that in most roles, your learning and value-add increase sharply for the first 18 months, then plateau for a while, then start declining as you get bored or the work becomes routine. The sweet spot is to leave right before the decline. Lucas: I like that. And I'd add that the decline often starts around month 30 to 36 for most corporate roles. You've automated your job, you're not being challenged, you're coasting on institutional knowledge. That's exactly the moment to leave. Luna: But again — only if you're paying attention. A lot of people stay too long because they're comfortable, not because they're growing. Lucas: Right. And the data backs that up. The Payscale study I mentioned — the people who left between month 35 and 40 were the ones who, in their exit interviews, said 'I felt I had accomplished what I set out to do.' The people who left later often said 'I stayed because I liked my team' or 'I was waiting for a promotion that never came.' Luna: So the three-year mark is a natural checkpoint. You look back and ask: did I do what I came here to do? If yes, it's time to move. If no, you might need to either push for a new challenge or accept that you're coasting. Lucas: Exactly. And here's one final data point that I think is really telling. The same LinkedIn report found that professionals who made their first job change at the three-year mark — as opposed to two years — had a 22 percent higher likelihood of being in a leadership role by year ten of their career. That's a huge long-term effect. Luna: So the message for someone early in their career is: don't be in a rush to leave at the two-year mark just because you think that's normal. Give it one more year, build something real, and then go. Lucas: Yeah, and for mid-career people, the same principle applies but with a twist — you need to be even more honest with yourself about whether you're still learning. Because by your third or fourth role, you know how to do the job in your sleep. The question is whether you're still stretching. Luna: That resonates. I think the real takeaway for this episode is: don't follow a rule blindly — whether it's two years or three or five. But if you're looking for a signal, the three-year mark is a powerful one. It balances loyalty with ambition, depth with breadth. Lucas: And if you're sitting at month 28 right now wondering whether to update your LinkedIn, maybe the answer is to give it another eight months — but with a clear plan for what you want to accomplish in that time. Make that third year count. Luna: Yeah, and if you've already passed the three-year mark and you're feeling stuck, that's a signal too. The data says the longer you stay past that point without clear growth, the more your earning potential starts to lag. Lucas: Right. So whether you're at 14 months or 48 months, the question is the same: are you still building something you can point to? If the answer is no, it might be time to start looking.