The Case for Quitting Quitting

In this series, professionals share all the right — and wrong — ways to leave a job. Follow the stories here, and write your own (please include #IQuit somewhere in the body of your post).

The public relations industry can have high turnover, thanks in part to its great growth prospects. The industry has lots of agencies large and small; there are plenty of in-house positions that offer great opportunities too. And then there's the indie route as well — the opportunity to turn free agent.

People in my field naturally tend to job hop, much as they do in other similar creative and marketing professions. This is especially true in the first 10 years of a career. I worked for five companies in the first decade of my career.

However, something started to switch for me about 15 years ago. I began to see that once I began to stick around for a longer period of time, I was working with others who also stayed put in one place. We all benefited because the chemistry remained.

This is true in other fields as well. It would be interesting to see an economist or a researcher tackle this.

For example, in sports, the teams that have managed to hang on to their core talent have remained perennial winners. This notably includes the Yankees with Joe Torre as a manager and their “core four” players in the 1990s and the Patriots with coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady in the 2000s and 2010s. There are exceptions, but consistency seems to create winners in an era where free agency is the norm.

I have only quit once in the last 15 years in part because the two companies I have worked for over the period have retained their excellent talent for many years. Many of the people I worked with at my last firm are still there today, nearly a decade later. And at Edelman, many of the people I work with today have been here over a decade, in many cases longer.

Part of this, I believe is that both of these firms continue to be run by their founders. But I think there's more.

What I've come to see is that the longer a team works together, particularly in creative and professional service environments, the more they gel as a team. We learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, and the chemistry builds. This isn't always true, but it begins to make the case for sticking around. And these people get it.

So my advice is try to quit only once or twice but then, particularly if you see chemistry around you, try to quit quitting, and stick it out.