> We often hear that "people leave managers, not jobs." But sometimes, people leave jobs despite loving their managers.

These two aren’t really mutually exclusive. Your manager may be extremely friendly and accommodating to you personally (as it seems like the author’s manager was), but part of a manager’s job is growing and supporting their reports with their career goals. If you’ve spent years majorly underleveled like it seems this person did, your manager is failing you. No matter how much of a nice person they might be, they’re not doing their job well if you’re attempting to grow at the company and aren’t succeeding.

So yes, I do think that this person still left a manager. He left a manager who wasn’t meeting the needs he had to stay at the company.