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# Knowing when to leave
- URL: https://werd.io/knowing-when-to-leave/
- Published: 2025-11-30T17:12:19.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-30T17:12:19.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: #ben-684a32da145d7d001be71dae, #Migrated-1749693130536, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-06-11 21:52, Asides

*I wrote this in my blog drafts well over a decade ago (exact date unclear). I thought I'd publish it as-is as an aside. I'm sure it was going to be an excellent full post, but clearly this is just the intro. I still agree though: knowing when to go is important!*

Some years ago, someone I worked with closely on a project that was failing had a mini-meltdown. He unfriended the rest of the team across social media, including the official accounts, which he took over unilaterally; he refused to even sit at the same table as the rest of the team on company trips, and at events.

To this day, I still don't exactly know what triggered the episode. But it was a moment that made me realize the project we were working on together could never succeed. Four months later, I had extracted myself.

Years later, I believe this was the wrong decision.

Knowing when to leave is an important skill. You've got to balance your loyalty, and your long-term career, against the objective facts in any situation. Leaving a project early is not a good idea: it sends a message that you're ready to flake out when times get tough. (In a startup situation, times *will* get tough.) However, if a project:

- genuinely has no long-term prospects, either for you personally or as a whole
- and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it
- and the situation is not directly of your own making

You need to think about going. Anything else is running on a treadmill for no reason.