I work in applied research in the software development field. The office of the startup I am working for is 10 walking minutes away from my home, the people are friendly, my job is fun and I am able to drive change for the better in our product. My payment is good, so that I can save a 3digit amount of money every month.
Three weeks ago, I got a call from a headhunter. She found my profile on LinkedIn and she wanted to put me on a research position for a world famous e-commerce company. From a portfolio/CV perspective, this would definitely put me in a better position for the future of my career. I would be in charge of research projects with stakeholders across multiple continents, a lot of communication across time zones, better payment, the chance to grow inside the company etc. Over the last weeks we had a lot of talks and I went through two job interviews and finally received an offer yesterday.
After thinking about what I have and what I could have with the new position, I decided to reject the offer at the end. The new position would make me commute two hours per day, it would make me work late due to time zone differences with my stakeholders, it would make me do a lot of administration work, it would mean I could no longer have breakfast with my girlfriend in the morning. It would also mean that I could not participate in after work activities such as having dinner, doing sports because of the time I would spend driving back and forth. A total of 40 hours per month would be spent just on commuting.
Now, my heart said I should reject the offer and stay where I am because the complete package makes me happier. Which I did. Still, my brain is not completely convinced. I am 29, I should take every change I can get, I must climb the career ladder. But deep in my heart I feel that having 20 minutes breakfast with my partner in the morning gives me so much more happiness than having a prestigious job.
What do you think? How do you handle decisions like these? Have you ever accepted a cut in live quality in order to take a big career step?
Best K
Submitted March 30, 2017 at 05:25AM by K_E http://ift.tt/2okl8m1
