Quitting your job sucks. But despite the pains, we still do it.

The average worker today stays at each of his or her jobs for 4.4 years, according to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the expected tenure of the workforce’s youngest employees is about half that. – Jeanne Meister, contributor at Forbes

So for all of us born in the 80’s or later, the average time with a company is a little over 2 years? That’s a pretty crazy statistic, but not very surprising. I was in charge of hiring engineers at a technology company in Boston for a short time, and 2 years is close enough to what I saw there.  As for me, I’m guessing I’m somewhere past the 2nd standard deviation, because I worked at Vecna for 5 years. Does that make me an outlier? Mr. Loud my high school statistics teacher would be upset that I forgot the exact definition and that I’m making wild guesses about the variance. But it still puts me apart from most of my friends.

I had a very specific goal in mind taking my first job out of college: to learn enough about web development to start my own company. So why did I take 5 years to quit if my intention was always to leave? I told myself that I was still learning. And in truth, I was. All the way until my last day I was learning really important things about software development and leading a team. But, I also used that as an excuse. Mostly because there is never a good time to quit.

Even if you hate your job and despise the people around you, quiting isn’t easy and can always be done tomorrow or the next. The lines are many: “I need this last paycheck”, “I got a raise/promotion a while ago, I shouldn’t leave now”, “I’ll get that raise if I stay one more month”, “My boss will be mad”, or “My co-workers need me!”. I’m sure I had each of those thoughts at one point. I just never saw a good opening to bow out.

But I tried to not lose sight of the reason I took the job in the first place. There were greater things awaiting on the other side. It just took a bit of a kick for me to actually pull the trigger and go for it. The kick came from my wife Lindsay who one night announced that she had a job offer in Florida. In Florida of all places! So I chanelled my dad’s way of approaching problems and created a spreadsheet of the pros and cons. Stay put or pickup things in Boston and head down to sunny Florida?

At the top of the pros list was the first to come to mind: better weather. We had just lived through Boston’s single worst season of snow and were not excited to repeat that experience. Fun fact, the second worst month of snow came when my dad lived in Boston while he was a graduate student at MIT. Muahaha, I win, dad! No more “Back in my day there was more snow than you can imagine!”.

What was on the top of the cons list? Leaving good friends, of course. I’d miss hanging out in Dustin’s over-sized apartment on the Charles, and playing with Gabe and Angela’s cute puppy Atlas, and connecting with Devon for beers at Pandemonium’s Tavern Draft. There were so many people we’d be leaving, not the least being Matt and his girlfiend Sara.

But that wasn’t the only thing listed under the red-colored “cons” column. Under that first entry were a dozen or so reasons why it’s ever hard to quit. I had just been promoted. I was a month away from hitting the 5 year mark. Vecna was in a tough situation and needed a leader. All these things weighed on me and made the list of problems heavy.

It turns out, though, it’s not all about me. Under the green column read, “Great opportunity for Lindsay”. This was going to be a move that would give both of us a shot at something we’d been wanting for a while. For Lindsay, the move was fueled by the chance for me to make good on a long-held goal. For me, I saw the excitement Lindsay had for a change. How could we deny each other that opportunity? Besides, I learned enough about web development in the last 5 years that I was confident I could give starting a company the ol’ college try.

After making the decision, I had to steel myself for the conversation I was dreading. At least I had something that would soften the blow. Lindsay and I had made a deal: if we moved, I could stay in Boston for a couple of months to help close out some projects at Vecna. It turns out, the actual “Hey, I’m quiting” conversation wasn’t so terrible and the feeling of adventure that came afterwards was totally worth it.

Now we had to do the hard thing of moving.