I used to make a habit of talking to coworkers who were leaving about why they left.

You have to have a pretty good reputation for discretion to get them to really talk, but I noticed a pattern in those who would.

You tend to hear their list of grievances in reverse chronological order. The last straw comes first, but if you keep them talking long enough the first straw eventually comes out.

Some of those first straws are often something pretty avoidable. The final straw can be harder to avoid but recency bias makes us focus on it in ways that don’t seem to line up with the experiences of the person who feels wronged.

I can’t say for sure if they accumulate linearly or not but it does seem like fixing the easy ones does result in longer times to last straw. But they seem so minor to the team that it can be difficult to get movement on them. And it sometimes only applies to new “customers”. Some will forgive you for things they had to deal with if nobody else has to, but that would take a lot more data points than I have to say for sure.