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Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Based only on anecdotal evidence (and yeah the plural of anecdote is not data) I'd sugges that figure wildy, wildly underestimated.

I'm trying to think if I know /anyone/ over 35 who hasn't? Maybe, but I have to think quite hard.

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It also depends on how the question is asked. I've left jobs where I respected my manager...but not someone higher up the chain. At least once the manager left almost immediately after I did, for the same reasons.

This is a good point. I’ve never left due to a direct manager but definitely have left due to leadership above them

It's probably closer to 100%. People quit bosses, not jobs.

That's a nice meme from LinkedIn but I'm sure there a few other reasons including a better paycheck, flexibility, or even benefits.

> paycheck, flexibility, or even benefits

At many, many companies, your manager directly decides or at least influences all three of these, so if you quit due to them, you're also quitting because of your manager.

Few direct managers have the ability to give you a raise that a new employer would, in cases where you're being underpaid relative to the market.

They also rarely have much influence over work flexibility or benefits.

> Few direct managers have the ability to give you a raise that a new employer would

I'm usually very up-front with my reports on this. I make it very clear that I cannot compete with other companies on an immediate short-term compensation bump, so if they prioritize "money now" over everything else, then they should go out and interview.

However in the four years that I was a manager at my previous company, nobody on my team ever took me up on the advice to switch companies to get more money faster.

>immediate short-term compensation bump

Did you believe you could deliver better long term compensation? This phrasing suggests that, it's a clever way to suggest something without promising it.

> Did you believe you could deliver better long term compensation?

Usually, but not always. Of course it's impossible to predict 4+ years into the future, because so many factors can come into play on that time scale.

External forces (spouse moving, money, other life changes) would be the other big factors. It's going to come down on one side of that fence or the other.

That's a cute saying, but it's not a universal truth.

I have quit bosses before. But I have also quit jobs where I had excellent bosses before, because the job (or the company) had problems.

I've never quit because of a manager. Maybe I'm just lucky. I've been able to work reasonably well with all of my managers, even the ones who saw things very differently from how I do. I've only ever quit a company because I had a better offer and they wouldn't match it.

I haven't.

I was once fired because of my idiot boss. I didn't quit. Maybe I should have, but getting fired meant I could fight it just enough to get some severance pay out of it.

He fired me the day I returned from a month long illness. Before that, he was sometimes annoyed he saw me leaning back while watching my scripts write my code for me.

None of the jobs I quit were because of my boss. One was because I really needed to do something more interesting than maintaining a bunch of legacy sites. One where I volunteered to get fired was because I wanted to start my own company.

I left my very first job out of college because of it. I think you're probably right.

I'm glad I got it out of the way early, I'm a few years into my next job now and loving it.

I think all of the jobs I've left since I graduated College 15 years ago were because of managers, except the very first one.

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