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Dear Businesslady,

I work in a small office that has seen a lot of turnover in the past 8 months. Half the staff has moved on to other jobs and we’re still working on filling some of the open positions.

I have become the most senior staff, which is scary because I have been on the job for less than three years, but in comparison to the new staff, I have sage-like wisdom of institutional knowledge. This has meant that I have been deeply involved in familiarizing new staff with our work in spite of the fact that none of them are my direct reports.

My new coworkers are great and I enjoy working with them, but the organization is still a ways away from solving the cultural issues that lead to the mass exodus. And now I want to continue that exodus but feel extremely guilty about it.

I am among the final candidates for new job that would come with a 20% raise over my current salary and probably a healthier office culture, but it would definitely be kinder to my colleagues if I stayed.

There are still certain processes that only I know how to do because there hasn’t been enough time to train the new staff on them. I am slowly documenting all the necessary processes, but worry that I would forget to put something in the documentation and then screw over whoever has to take over those tasks.

If I get offered the position at the other company, I would need to start as soon as possible. However, at my current job, my coworkers and I are working on a project that will take another 5 months to complete. Not an ideal time to leave, but openings in my industry can be few and far between. And I’d be lying if I said money wasn’t a motivator. I am pretty underpaid and I hate that it bothers me, but it does.

Would it be a total dick move to leave my team in this time of relative turmoil?

-Selfishly Seeking Transition

Dear Selfish (Who, Spoiler Alert, Is Not Actually Selfish),

There are a couple letters like yours in my queue of questions, so this seemed like as good a time as any to give you all a pep talk about the complicated emotional dynamics of job-searching and organizational loyalty.

The closest thing I have to a unified theory of life and human behavior goes something like this: you’re either worried you’re part of the problem, or you are part of the problem. This isn’t limited to the professional realm, but it’s particularly applicable in that context—all the most productive and responsible people I know are constantly fretting: Is their work good enough? Are they pulling their weight? Are they unwittingly making their colleagues’ lives miserable? (I count myself among that group; my mental state is basically in a constant pendulum swing between 75% “this is it; I’m finally going to get fired” and 25% “goddammit this place would practically burn to the ground if I weren’t so awesome at what I do.”) By contrast, the real Problem Coworkers—the ones who are constantly behind deadline, always asking huge favors with zero recognition of the imposition, never at their desk when you need them—they never seem to even realize that they’re That Guy.

So what does my unified theory have to do with your situation? Well, if you’re worried about screwing over your old workplace, that means you can’t possibly screw over your old workplace for real.

I absolutely believe that your departure, if it happens, would come at an inconvenient time for your office. But the thing is, there’s never really a good time to leave a job—not if you’re a valued employee, anyway, as opposed to someone everyone’s secretly hoping will move on. Turnover is always disruptive, and even if it happens when things are slow, that can present issues too (what if your replacement can’t hang once it gets busy, but it’s weeks or months before that becomes apparent?).

I’ve been on the other end of many “I got a new job and I’m GONE” announcements, and I’ve reacted to some of them with the mixture of dismay, envy, worry, and frustration that you’re surely expecting from your coworkers. But you know what? It takes a huge amount of effort for me to conjure up those feelings after the fact, and I never think ill of my former colleagues whose departure made things inconvenient for the rest of us. Sometimes it’s rough for a while; sometimes it works out more smoothly than you could’ve anticipated—but either way, there eventually comes a time where the post-coworker reality becomes the new normal, and even the long hours and stressful transition periods fade into the fog of memory.

It’s great when you’re emotionally invested in your job and have real fondness for the people you work with, even if the flipside of that means that you can’t just blithely ride off into the sunset as soon as something better comes your way. But your coworkers will deal—and if you’re being thoughtful about leaving them with as much support as possible, they’ll remember you fondly as they adjust to your absence. Plus, if the issues at your organization are as systemic as your letter suggests, your defection might end up helping them in the long run: arguments like “we can’t keep good people like X because of our terrible track record with Y” can often help higher-ups take employee complaints more seriously.

These types of decisions become trickier when the new gig is a dubious improvement over your current job—if you’re worried that you’ll regret the change, that introduces an added complication. But the combo of better-culture/higher-pay makes this a no-brainer. Go forth and take that new job with my blessing—and if it doesn’t work out, keep searching until you find something that does.

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Tags: advice , dear businesslady , jobs , work