Length is a decision, not an accident, and it is the right one far less often than people think. A long farewell earns its space in exactly one situation: you knew this person well enough to have something specific to say, and the card or the message is yours alone rather than a corner of a shared page.
Everything here runs over 45 words because it needs to. These are the messages that name the thing you will actually miss, admit that you are glad for them and sorry for yourself at once, or tell someone you were wrong about them at first. None of that fits in two lines, and compressing it produces something that sounds polite and says nothing.
Farewell is the only occasion on this site where the long set is substantial, and there is a reason. Leaving is the moment people are most willing to say what they actually thought of each other, and the only one where the recipient will read every word.
Where it is wrong: a group card, a colleague you rarely worked with, or any departure whose circumstances you are unsure of. Length magnifies a wrong guess. The short set handles all three without you having to know.
Archive started 21 August 2026 · last updated 21 August 2026
“Congratulations on your move to the platform team. Our groups have shared enough deadlines for me to know exactly what they are gaining. I have valued your rigour and your willingness to be disagreed with, and I look forward to working with you across the new boundary.”
“Leaving a job you are good at to go and learn something harder is not the easy option, and it is very you. Thank you for three years of straight answers, and for never once making a junior person feel small in a review. Go and be excellent at the new thing.”
“We have worked together across five time zones and never once been in the same room, and you are still one of the people I trust most here. Thank you for the early calls and the patient explanations. I hope our paths cross properly one day.”
“Thank you for the number of times you absorbed something from above so that the rest of us never had to think about it. I only ever found out about half of them, and I suspect that was the point. Whoever gets you next is getting someone rare.”
“Handing a team over in the middle of a program is not a comfortable thing to do, and you have done it about as carefully as it can be done. Thank you for the detail in the handover, and for being straight with us about what is unfinished.”
“Thank you for the years of counsel that nobody ever required you to give. You were generous with time you did not have, and specific in moments when vague encouragement would have been far easier. I hope to be that useful to someone else one day.”
“Thank you for your contribution during your time on the team. You took on difficult work early, raised your own standard without being asked to, and leave with the respect of everyone you worked alongside. You have my support and a reference whenever you need one.”
“There is a version of this job that was just a job, and I did not have it because you were here. Two years of terrible coffee, honest opinions, and being talked down from at least three emails I should never have sent. The new city gets a good one. Tell me when the spare room is ready.”
“I have thought about what I will actually miss and it is not the big things. It is having someone to eat lunch with who does not want to talk about work, and knowing exactly which face you would pull in a meeting without having to look. Congratulations on getting out. Do not become a stranger about it.”
“Everyone says they will do it eventually and you have actually gone and done it, which is the entire difference. I have watched you talk about this for long enough to know it is not a whim. It will be harder than the version in your head and you will still be glad. Ask me for anything.”
“I am not going to pretend to be purely delighted about this. You are doing the right thing and I would tell you to do it again, and Mondays here are about to get considerably worse. Both of those are true at once. Go and be very good at it, and keep answering your phone.”
“For the record, I thought you were difficult for roughly the first month, and I have never been more usefully wrong about anyone. Thank you for the arguments, all of which improved the work, and for the several years of friendship that followed them. The next place has no idea what it is getting.”
“I hired you into a role that turned out to be quite different from the one advertised, and you made it work anyway and then made it better. Losing you is the correct outcome for you and an inconvenient one for me, which is roughly how it should feel. My reference is yours whenever you want it.”
“You have been here longer than most of the systems, several of the buildings, and every single person who will sign this card. Thank you for the corrections, the shortcuts, and the standing offer to explain why something is the way it is. Nobody is going to know where anything is by Wednesday.”
“You gave me the two pieces of advice I still repeat to other people, and you gave them at moments when it would have been much easier to say something encouraging and vague. I have tried to be that direct with the people I now work with. Thank you, and please stay reachable.”
No matching messages found
Try clearing your search, or selecting “All Tones”.
