...or variations thereof...
I've never agreed with this sentiment
Partly because it just never rang true for me personally - I've typically left roles for better opportunities, be that pay, progression, job title etc
To rebalance work/life (e.g. reducing hours when my eldest was born, and then increasing a couple of years later)
Or because the specific project is complete, the firm has changed strategic direction and so on
A bad boss has been a factor twice (details in the comments), but even here it was one factor and not the deciding one
I've left very good and talented managers far more than I've left bad ones
But beyond anecdote, I've struggled to find a source or study for the claim
A quick google search surfaces countless blogs and articles offering it up as gospel, but very few citations
After some digging, it seems to stem from a 2015 Gallup paper and the following quote:
"A Gallup study of 7,272 U.S. adults revealed that one in two had left their job to get away from their manager"
and
"Most people know what it is like to work for a bad manager [...]. Gallup research has shown that nearly one in two people, at some point in their career, have quit their job — not just to get away from their manager, but in an effort to improve the overall quality of their life."
So clearly bad managers are a factor in an employee's decision to quit, but I don't think the evidence is there to say that they are the single defining factor that would make "people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers" true
But that's certainly what the discussion appears to have been reduced to, and I think that's very limiting in terms what we might do to address attrition, beyond blaming the line manager(!)
A more recent HBR paper in 2024 articulates a broader set of "push" and "pull" factors and four common scenarios as to why people leave; to get out/escape, to regain control between work and life, to better align role and skillset or to take the next step in their career
This seems to me a more promising approach, and certainly rings true for me at that personal, anecdotal level
In truth, the answer to "why do people quit?" is "it depends"
Worth exploring "it depends" rather than over-simplifying and reducing to a single factor

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