Expect Tours of Duty at Startups, Not Lifelong Careers

Turnover at hypergrowth startups runs at roughly 25% — double the rate of other companies. That's not a COVID phenomenon or a Great Resignation artifact. That's how startups have always worked, and it's not going to change.

Most companies respond to this by treating every departure as a failure. They write postmortems, adjust compensation, add retention bonuses. They pretend that if they just get the incentives right, people will stay.

They won't. And the effort to make them stay often makes things worse.

In 2013, Reid Hoffman coined the term "tour of duty" to describe the reality of employment at high-growth companies. Everyone who joins your startup is joining for a limited time — two years, four years, maybe six. Outside the founding team, it's rare to see someone at a startup for more than six years. That's not a problem. It's the nature of building something at speed.

What you can control is how you treat the tour — and how you treat people when it ends.

Why people leave

Understanding why team members move on matters — not so you can stop them, but so you can design for it honestly. In my experience at BenchSci, the reasons break into six patterns.

Burnout. Startups are pressure cookers. The speed, the constant change, the sense that you're always behind — it takes a real toll. Some people can sustain it for a year. Some for five. The line is different for everyone. Employees who leave to protect their mental health should always be respected, not resented.

Misaligned career expectations. Many people join startups to accelerate their growth. If they're a superstar, they will. But if the company outgrows their capabilities before they get the promotion they expected — or if the company doesn't grow fast enough to create the opportunities they were counting on — they leave. Both happen. Neither is anyone's fault.

The company changed. A 20-person startup is a fundamentally different place than a 100-person company or a 400-person company. Some people loved the version they joined and don't want to work at the version it became. That's honest, and it's fine.

Better opportunities. If you joined a rocket ship, your market value just went up. Your name is now associated with something that worked, which opens doors that didn't exist when you started. Some of those doors will be better than what you currently have. That's just how the market works — and it means you built something worth working on.

Starting their own thing. Many people join startups because they want to learn what building one actually takes — and then go do it themselves. Look at every major startup ecosystem and you'll find it seeded by alumni of the companies that came before. You should be proud of anyone who leaves to start something. It means you hired the right kind of person.

The environment just isn't right for them. If you can't function in rapid change, uncertainty, and structural ambiguity, a startup will grind you down. Some people discover this after joining. That's okay — it's hard to know until you're in it. At BenchSci, we created a "Pay to Part Ways" policy for exactly this reason: if someone realizes in their first three months that it isn't right for them, we pay a full month's salary for them to leave with dignity.

The alumni mindset

At BenchSci, we've built the tour of duty concept directly into our culture. Our culture strategy statement reads: "We hire adults, design an environment that enables them to act with freedom and accountability, and empower them with world-class leadership so they can do the best work of their lives during their tour of duty at BenchSci."

The goal isn't to keep people as long as physically possible. It's to keep them as long as they genuinely want to be here — because when people want to be here, they do the best work of their lives and it shows. We normalize leaving so that when someone feels it's time, they can say so without stigma. The opposite of stigma: we celebrate their time with us.

I personally talk to every person who resigns. I thank them for their contribution. I tell them they're now BenchSci alumni — and that we'll continue to support them as their career evolves. I tell them the door is always open. Nobody is limited to a single tour of duty.

I don't understand companies that get angry when people leave. You didn't own them. They gave you their time and their best work. The least you can do is honor that when they go.

The companies that handle this well don't just reduce bitterness on the way out. They build something more valuable: a network of alumni who stay connected, refer candidates, send business your way, and sometimes come back for a second tour.

Pretending people will stay forever is a way of avoiding reality. Embracing the tour of duty is a way of building something real — a place people are genuinely proud to have worked, long after they've moved on.