[robertlagrant]

> Are you really high performance if you can assess the situation but elect to quit instead of influence it?

So - high performance aside, this is the route I took in my last company. I felt the engineering team was good - great, even - but the engineering manager left and I moved into that post because I felt that an external hire might risk the team's currently effectiveness. It was a big change though; IC to 25-person engineering team across multiple products, and in a regulated environment. It's not done lightly, and given people can (or could) get paid loads for doing IC work, moving is also a good choice.