The longest I have ever held onto a job was 9 years.
I worked at that place from 2001 to 2010. I started there as a practicum student. What they had been doing was hiring a practicum student for a semester, then keep them on for an extra month to help train the next practicum student.
But they stopped doing that after they hired me. They decided to keep me on full-time instead.
I had two bosses when I worked there. One for the first 5 years, and the other for the final 4 years. Both bosses would do things socially with me and my fellow workers in our department. For example, we would go out to eat or go over to their place every December for a department Christmas party.
There were other social events for the broader organization, outside of just our department: celebrating birthdays and holidays, more work Christmas parties, and food at meetings.
One day in April 2010, shortly after I arrived at work, my office phone rang. It was my boss, and he asked me to come up to HR. I honestly had no idea what it was about.
I got there and was taken to a boardroom. My boss was there with an HR rep and someone I later found out was my union rep.
My boss got right to the point and laid me off. It took just a few seconds, and the rest of the meeting was spent telling me about severance and how long my benefits would last.
It turns out that I was not the only one. Half of our department lost their jobs that day. We were all part of organization-wide budget cuts. And because I found tools to improve my productivity by allowing me to produce the same output in less time, I was let go.
The main lesson I took away from this experience was that it does not matter how many times you ate out at a restaurant with your boss, how many times you celebrated Christmas at their house, how many of your birthdays they celebrated, or how many times they brought in doughnuts or pizza for everyone, you will still get laid off.
Camaraderie is nice, but we should not confuse it with job protection. Your boss might buy you food, but they will not buy you job security.
