Considering Windows 7 (if you count ESM) was supported all the way up to 2020, it's no wonder people skipped 8 (start menu tiles aside). It was a weird release schedule, and it was split into two versions 8 and 8.1, with 8 only having like 3 years of main stream support, and no ESM and 10 released just two years after 8.1.

If you count paying for ESM, someone could have gone from XP->7->11 and still been within support the whole time. Or from vista straight to 10.

Fun fact: Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was supported all the way to 2008. I believe it was the longest supported version of Windows.