So why do people QUIT? · The Exit Engineers

11h (edited) • Nuggets

So why do people QUIT?

A few years ago, I sat in a meeting listening to a new leader pitch the exact same "transformation" our old leader had pitched three years before. Pretty much the same initiatives, different name on the title page. And I remember the specific feeling of it; not anger, not even boredom. Nothing. I didn't care.

That's when I knew something in me had already left, even though I still had another four years in that seat.

So...why do so many people want to leave their corporate jobs?

They worked for years to get where they are. It is not easy to become a high earner at a large company.

They got the benefits and the money. That gave them many of the things in life they had dreamed about: cars, a house, vacations.

Talking about work with their friends makes them feel good. The title sounds impressive, and people say "Wow, nice!"

The security that comes with a stable job is not just financial; it becomes part of your identity, even if it is a mirage in this day and age.

And for many people, this is enough. Some people thrive in this environment.

For others, there comes a day (not always a big one) when they start to question whether they could be doing more, whether what they're doing now fulfills them, or whether the trade-offs are worth the returns.

These people begin to realize:

They sacrificed personal time with family for superficial relationships with co-workers and clients.

The work they are doing has become one cog in a machine that never actually makes anything, except more work for the machine sold to their clients by manufactured demand.

The benefits act like handcuffs and earmuffs, expected to buy your silence too.

The bulk of what happens inside a large corporation is "cover your ass," instead of supplying a need.

And these things start to eat away at them.

This creates doubt and insecurity. It causes once proud and confident people to start shedding what makes them great friends, wives, husbands, sisters, brothers, sons, or daughters.

I'm not saying the answer is always to quit and bet everything on something new.

But I am saying there are a lot of disillusioned folks walking through the halls of our commercial institutions. And contrary to what most managers believe, you'd never know it, because most of them hide it well (I didn’t).

It's hard to watch. It's even harder to live through.

Do you feel something similar?

Here's an exercise, if you want one: think about what actually motivates you. Not what you'd tell a co-worker you'd do if you won the lottery, but what you ACTUALLY want to do.

Write it down. Then walk away. Come back in a week and read it again.

Do this until you land on one short, honest sentence: "If my career disappeared tomorrow, and the money question was solved, I would spend my time doing ________."

Writing that sentence alone won't get you there; in fact, it took me a long time and someone outside my own head to actually act on mine. But if you land back on "I'd stay in corporate," that was still a worthwhile exercise.

And if you land somewhere else, and want a second, qualified set of eyes on what you found, I'm around.

Video is Yellowstone National Park, July 2026

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So why do people QUIT?