Why top employees quit
An interesting post on why top employees quit. I think #2 (Unchallenged) and #4 (Dead Company) actually go hand in hand sometimes, at least they did for me at EarthLink. When I left EarthLink, I didn’t have anything to do. I stayed home some days playing video games or hacking on side projects because the alternative was wasting my time in the office. Just before I took vacation for my wedding and honeymoon, my manager reassured me that when I got back they’d have a project for us to work on and that things would be better. Guess what? I got back from my honeymoon and my boss’ boss told me that my boss had left to go to Google and we STILL didn’t have anything to work on.
Money, #1 on the list, has never been a consideration when I’ve left a job, though I will say I’ve been fortunate with every move I’ve made. I’ve always left because there was a better opportunity ahead for me. I left Excite because they were going out of business and I was joining Jel in Sacramento where I could afford a house. I left Jel because they were losing all of their contracts and I was joining EarthLink to, once again, kick ass and take names working on webmail. I left EarthLink because I was bored out of my mind and woefully underutilized and was joining Yahoo! to build an important web service to back the Oddpost powered Yahoo! Mail Beta.
It’s actually interesting to think about the things that made me leave other companies, if only to consider my current situation. I’ve now been with Yahoo! longer than I was with any other company (it’ll be two years in November), so statistically speaking it’s about time for me to move on. However, Yahoo! continues to pay my salary, continues to challenge me and surrounds me with amazingly talented and smart people. I even look forward to my 140 mile drive just so I can be in the office (although I will be quite happy to be living in the Bay Area once again). So I guess what I’m saying is, I’ll be a Yahoo! for a while longer (all bets are off if I win the lottery). 
