[ghaff]

That doesn't seem unusual at all. If anything, I'd say 10%+ retention over 15+ years sounds pretty good. And that's even allowing for survivorship bias in that, as someone else noted, many companies that existed in 2004 aren't even around today.

In terms of anecdata, I know that no one else from my non-SV company new hire class from 10+ years ago is still with the company.

[ryandrake]

In the medium and large companies I've worked, it's always been very bifurcated: You had a lot of people who have been with the company a long time, and a lot of people who are fresh, but there is always this huge chasm of few employees between 4 years and, say 12 years. I explain it financially. The way I think it works is typical equity vesting is about 4 years, so without refresh grants (which in my experience are rare) people churn after around 4 years due to the vesting cliff. The ones who survived to over 10 years or so are all Directors and VPs and SVPs by now, and are probably making mega-bank, so there is no incentive to disrupt the gravy train by leaving.