Why Apple’s next CEO shows you don’t need to ‘move out to move up’

John Ternus, who takes over as CEO of Apple this week, joined Apple in 2001, just four years after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

Satya Nadella entered Microsoft in 1992, only two years after completing his master’s degree.

Andy Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, 24 years before he took the top job.

Three of the world’s most powerful technology companies are now led by executives who built their careers largely from within.

Their careers counter one of the most persistent pieces of modern career advice: that getting ahead means moving around.

For much of the last thirty years, we’ve been told that long-term employment was dead.

As large employers moved from employment guarantees to frequent downsizing during the 1980s and 1990s, ideas of loyalty became passé.

Career advice has frequently revolved around embracing free agency, taking charge of our own careers through regular mobility across employers.

Career success is supposed to come from proactively moving to wherever your services would be most valuable.

No sector has epitomized the image of easy come, easy go employment quite like tech.

Yet our biggest tech companies are now being led by organization men, executives whose career paths look like they’ve come straight out of the 1950s.

I’ve been studying employment for over two decades now, and I’ve started to suspect that the way that we talk about modern careers may be all wrong.

Yes, loyalty is dead and employment is now something of a marriage of convenience.

But we haven’t moved to a world of hyper-mobility.