The case for staying, the case for going, and how to tell which is yours
On the Monday following your review in Las Vegas, the number that keeps circling your mind has nothing to do with your rating. It's the one from a Deloitte survey a coworker passed along with no comment: just 5% of women expect to remain with their current employer for more than five years. You've been at your Las Vegas company for nine. Twice you scan the sentence, and then the laptop snaps shut.
Nothing was wrong with the review, to be fair. "Good year. Keep it up." Your manager meant it warmly, and that's what makes it hard. "Keep it up" describes a plateau. No one among the leadership team in Southern Nevada has ever been instructed merely to carry on. Someone asked them what their next step might be.
Where things stand
Staying keeps the things that are slow to rebuild: the trust you've earned, colleagues who anticipate what you're going to say, a retirement match that fully vests in two years, a commute you could drive with your eyes closed on the way out of Summerlin. It also keeps the plateau, and a plateau lasts exactly as long as you allow it to.
Leaving trades all of that for a story still waiting to be written. A new boss, unfamiliar politics, a year spent proving what you already proved a decade ago. A recruiter's excitement is genuine, but so is the fact that she collects her fee when you sign, not when you're content.
Turning point
The 5% isn't a verdict on staying. It's a verdict on staying by default. Most of the women surveyed in Clark County aren't telling anyone they're headed for the door. They're declining to promise they'll stay, which is a different and more useful position. So the real question isn't whether you ought to be among the 5%. The better question is whether you would sign up for this position again right now, at this pay, reporting to this manager, if an offer arrived for the first time. If yes, stay with clear eyes. If your answer is "well, there's the match," then you already know the answer, and it isn't the match.
Why this goes beyond a single review
In that Deloitte research, which gathered responses from 7,500 women spanning 15 countries, 36% reported that their stress had climbed over the last twelve months, and 29% rated their mental health as poor. Loyalty isn't what's being captured there. Exhaustion is. A woman who has spent nine years in a role that stopped growing around year five isn't demonstrating loyalty. Her responsibilities are being folded into someone else's, and whatever gratitude the firm feels will arrive as a note in her inbox instead of a raise in Summerlin.
Three steps worth taking over the next seven days
First: Draft the two offers. Write a single page that presents your present role the way a headhunter in Enterprise might market it, covering title, compensation, reporting line, responsibilities, and what comes next. On a second page, outline the best realistic alternative you could land, whether locally across the Valley or in Henderson. Read both without emotion. One will look like a job you'd genuinely take.
Second: Ask the question your review left out. "What would need to be true for me to be considered for the next level, and by when?" A useful answer includes a date. "Keep it up" never does.
Third: Have one outside conversation. Not a formal interview, just coffee. Spending one hour this way reveals how your skills are valued by someone who has not already settled on a price for them. Local networks such as the Las Vegas chapters of NAWBO or CREW, or a SCORE Las Vegas mentor, can be a good place to start.
That figure on your review was never a nudge toward the exit. It was pointing out that most women have stopped assuming they'll stay, and it may be time you stopped assuming it too.