"You're just getting older and more hacked off. You are gaining no new skills or experiences. If you stay you'll just be older and less employable".
Exactly the same mindset I had back in 1999, almost to the word, when I PVR'd after 16 years. And, despite the redundancies that have happened in the big wide world after that, it was still absolutely the right decision at the right time for the right reasons, given those circumstances.
No regrets. I gave my most formative working years of my life to the RAF and in return it gave me a mindset, an ethic that has served me well compared to some of my contemporaries. When I have been out of work outside, it has been for less than six weeks at a time, even when times were crap.
But, I'm glad I served when I did and not now. Even if you take out the rose tinted nostalgia that some of us are given to and are objective about it, I would venture that now is not a particularly pleasant time to be serving. Not from what I've been seeing and hearing for the last 4 years.