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Comment by mnicole | Hacker News Reader

Different from what the two current sibling posts say, I've experienced a shift in the company's morale when a longstanding employee quit abruptly one morning after hearing about (drastic) changes he didn't agree with. Two weeks after his departure, another team lead left and within the span of three months, I believe five or six people quit. It was never the same after, and a year down the road would see even more turnover.

It honestly probably wouldn't have been as bad as it was if management hadn't tried to coddle the leftovers by telling them everything was going to be okay. Their acknowledgement of the loss made it apparent they were scrambling to figure something out.

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That is a really good point, if you don't constrain the term change you have to include 'damage' as a form of change. Certainly it can be damaging to a company for an individual to leave. I've got personal experience with this and I am sure many people have a similar story in their history.

When I left Sun I got an email from another long time Sun employee who had just quit as well. They said that if I was leaving then the place must be irredeemable and so they were moving on as well. It left me feeling profoundly conflicted because while I had given up on the company by that point I had never intended to cause others to leave.

So I have to accept your point that a company can be changed by the departure of an individual. It may or may not be the change the individual was seeking however.

Yup, same experience here. If someone well respected leaves, moral can be completely destroyed. That person doesn't even have to be an important person.

One of the most interesting type of personality is the useless guy who brighten the office up, once they leave, the whole office can fall apart, especially if the office is full of strong personalities.

Yup. Yourdon (or somebody like that) noted the example of an apparently useless team member that had the notable property that whenever he/she joined a team, the project became a success. I've subsequently looked for such examples, and have spotted several likely instances. And perhaps more importantly, I've realized that I can try to be one myself (hopefully without also becoming "useless").

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