It's funny, two years ago when I tried to walk away the first time I ultimately took 5 weeks of vacation and moved to an independent contributor role, leaving my team of 65 in someone else's hands, I volunteered to help with the transition and provided input on how I thought things could be organized. They did not take me up on any of it. We're not indispensable, no matter how much we think we are. And now that I've quit for real, I half expected to hear from the guys who took over my projects. But I won't. They'll figure it out.
It's funny, I had a dream about this last night, where I left my firm and things actually *did* fall apart. I don't often remember my dreams any more so it was a strange one (probably linked to the fact I am due to talk to my boss today about going on a flexible contract!)
I work with a lot of "difficult" people, and I tend to be the smoother-over, sticking-togetherer, creating systems where needed, fixer-upperer, persuade not-to-leaverer person. So it's easy to feel "indispensable" because I have fingers in many pies (dykes? Mixed metaphors FTW).
What I have realised more as I've got older though is that I'm not actually doing anybody any favours here long term by playing that role. Sticking a band aid over a crack just allows the crack get bigger and bigger until it gets to the point where the band aid fails and you end up with a critical failure (whereas if you'd addressed the problem properly at the start, you might have been able to avoid that).
I worry that I have been exactly that band aid, and that things may go pretty wrong when I leave because I have been effectively facilitating all kinds of bad behaviour. I will leave behind a corporate culture I am not very proud of, covered over by a load of sticky tape. I don't think I personally have the skills/energy needed to change the corporate culture (given a big personality or two driving it pretty relentlessly in the opposite direction to the one I would go): but actually it probably would have been better for them and for me if I'd stopped with the sticky tape and moved on sooner, leaving a smaller crisis that may have been easier to fix.
Anyway, it's water under the bridge, and life-long learning is a thing, for me and for them. But even if my dream comes true and things do start to fall apart after I go (and who knows, probably they will sail on through, and just do things differently!) it will actually be because of my failings, rather than my strengths.
I feel strangely unemotional about that. It's not something to be proud of, or ashamed of: it's just who I am. But it does make it easier in a way to walk away. Staying out of duty is really just a band-aid solution. At some point they (and we) just have to put our big-girl pants on and get on with the rest of our lives.