People leave, of course, though we don’t say “leave”; we say they “promoted themselves to customer.” Lashanna leaves to have children. Jacie comes back after her first kid but leaves before her second. Matt leaves to become an Anglican minister. Todd leaves to breed irises. Liza leaves to sail around the world. Kelly leaves for an NGO. Eino, thirty-six, says in his goodbye email that he’s leaving to regain his health. Holly leaves to get some sleep. Amy leaves for Microsoft. Dennis leaves for Microsoft. Hiroshi leaves for Microsoft. Google, LinkedIn, eBay, Airbnb, Facebook, Twitter, Expedia, Tableau. Tim wins big on Jeopardy! and leaves to open a bookstore. Victor leaves for more reading time. Nina goes on medical leave for stress and never returns. Lance leaves to sober up. Noah goes home to Denmark. Anna leaves and starts a firm that helps vendors understand Amazon. Jack leaves and starts one that helps people interview at Amazon. Pat leaves to work on Zune and a year later he boomerangs back. That’s what we call the people who return: boomerangs. Brent leaves for Apple and better work-life balance and boomerangs back when Apple’s work-life balance turns out to be even worse. Anton boomerangs from start-up land. Ira boomerangs from retirement in the South of France. Nathan and Prakash and Eric all boomerang back from Nordstrom corporate, which they call “retirement,” better dressed than we remember them. Pete spends one day at a new company and boomerangs back. I never thought I’d come back, the boomerangs say, grinning and wild-eyed, and when we ask what brought them back, they always say, “The people. I missed the people,” and I know what they mean; I missed some of them even if we hadn’t worked together in ages, missed their camaraderie, their under-eye circles, their gallows jokes, the way they kept showing up for me and I kept showing up for them because no one of us could make it alone, though it’s arguable whether we could make it together, either. As for me, I keep staying, past the point where I’d owe back my signing bonus, past my first seven door desks and four bosses and five reorgs, three U.S. presidents, two unfounded rumors of stock splits, the nonupling of the employee population. Sometimes I take it year by year, sometimes stock vest by stock vest. At one point my staying is a week-to-week thing. I keep a go bag under my desk for the few possessions I can’t see leaving behind. But I don’t use the bag. I stay.