After proudly working 80 hr weeks for 5 years and realizing they haven't got much in return, they may decide it's time to change jobs and set about repeating the process.
By this point, they've found themselves dealing with at least one recession and if they haven't already been layed off, they consider themselves fortunate to have a job. When things get better and they ask for something in return for all their sacrifices, they then begin to realize things aren't going the way they want them to go with their second employer.
At this point, they try and find a third place to work. Perhaps they even decide to give contracting a try and at least be compensated for their massive overtime and sacrifice.
They get their third job out of college and continue giving it their all, sacrificing social life and many other things. By now, they are highly skilled in a narrowly defined area. They hear of new technologies that present major threats to their industry but because their employers provide no training along the way and because they've been working their @asses off ever since graduation, they haven't been able to keep current. By now, it's time for them to experience their second or third recession.
They probably got through their first recession ok since they were young and just the old "deadwood" was being cleaned out of their company. However, they now grow anxious as they realize striking similarities between themselves and those they considered to be "old deadwood" 10 or 15 years earlier. As supervisors now try to say things to them that 10-15 years previously they naively took to mean they were on a career fast track, they now react with indifference or even cynicism. At some point in the not too distant future, the corporate grim reaper will come for them. In the aftermath, they will do some serious soul searching to determine whether at the age of 40, they should continue or exit the profession, start over and find something else to do.
That's if they can last the 5 years it can take to become vested in a company for matching 401k benefits and those extra earned vacation days which become a liability to the company when they have to lay people off.
No, they'd rather periodically dump and rehire employees rather than permitting them to establish a compensated history at the company.
Its a damn shame you can't fit that on a t-shirt.