Australian universities will lose a substantial proportion of their staff through retirement over the next decade. A recent study has indicated that attrition of academic staff that are not at the end of their career may exacerbate the problem. To assist in developing appropriate retention strategies, this article examines the ways in which early career researcher-academics across different Australian university sites currently experience work and the reasons why they consider leaving the academy. It explores the "exit options" that they put forth as possible and desirable, and scrutinises what these exit options can teach us about what kind of work place and what kind of university we should build in order to retain academic staff, and keep them happy and productive. The article also discusses some of the strategies that the early career researchers use to cope with, and survive in, the contemporary university, and how these strategies might be neither individually nor institutionally sustainable. (Contains 1 table.)