The Ethics of Leaving

A few posts ago I made reference to a former U.S. President who had the good sense to leave before he could be put on trial in the Senate (and most likely convicted and sentenced to prison). Regardless of how you feel about this individual, or for that matter, how you feel about the Congress of his time or ours, it's still hard to argue with his timing. That his Vice-President issued him a complete pardon shortly after he left office, and that he has subsequently been completely rehabilitated in a disturbingly revisionist history of that time are both irrelevant to the fact that unlike some other public figures one could mention, his timing was excellent...

Now, unless the readership of this blog is a lot larger (and much stranger) than I had imagined, it's unlikely that any of you reading it will ever run for President, much less be elected President and then impeached for high crimes, misdemeanors, or just being an arrogant prick who thinks the Constitution should not apply to you. Unless you are unusually blessed in your choice of profession and specific career arc, however, you will eventually experience a situation where you, too, have remained in your job for too long, and it would be better for everyone if you just leave...

This happens to different people for different reasons; quite often through no fault of their own. Perhaps your tolerance for idiotic management practices has been exceeded; perhaps you have grown too experienced, to wise or too jaded for your current role, and your employers will not promote you; perhaps you have just reached a point in your life's journey where your job no longer fulfills your needs, whatever those might be. Regardless of the cause, you have arrived at the point when it is time for you to move on, and your performance will almost always begin to decline at this point...

I realize that some people can remain in a single job all of their lives and never reach this point; they are the individuals I referred to above as being "unusually blessed." And I know there are some people who will always be promoted into a new position at just the right moment to avoid burning out or losing their love for the company; these individuals are either insanely lucky or else offspring of whoever owns the company. Some people will change jobs to accompany their spouse to a new location or challenge, and some people will seek out a new position that offers greater opportunity for advancement, earning potential, or life in a new place they've always wanted to live. But most of us will, at least once, be faced with a situation where the company would actually be better off without us...

The question is, if your company would be better off without you, do you have an ethical responsibility to quit and let them replace you with a better candidate? What if you know that they won't make the transition well, and the short-run result will be a significant loss? How about a case where your departure will result in someone completely unqualified being promoted into your position; does the fact that your departure will serve the long-term needs of the company outweigh the fact that the short-term results will be disastrous?

A more frequent issue is what happens when your needs would be better served by remaining in the job, even though you are completely burned out and would like to leave. Suppose you have a family to support and need the salary, or that members of your family are dependent on your job for their medical insurance. At what point do your personal responsibilities outweigh your duty to the company?

In the long run, of course, it is unlikely that your remaining with the company will actually destroy it, while quitting your job and walking away might well destroy you and/or the people who are counting on you; this is why most people are so reluctant to just walk away from a job that they can still stand. But once you've burned out to the point where you are no longer making (or saving) the company as much as they are paying you, do you have a responsibility to them to take your final curtain call and leave?

It's worth thinking about