August 18, 2005 :: The classic career dilemma

The other day I was out to dinner with a friend, and I ran into an old coworker. He was once a software architect at the medium-to-large firm where I have worked for the past 2 1/2 years, and he left rather quickly. Very exuberant, very smart German guy. A lot of fun to work with, and very much into cutting edge technology. Some of the other developers here and I used to do lunch with him now and then, but I hadn't seen him in a while.

He hit me with a pitch: he's starting his own company. Nothing big, a small consulting firm. Familiar territory to me. He tried to sell me on joining his firm, as a consultant. I told him to email me and we'd go to lunch or something.

Now on to my dilemma. This particular episode highlighted a dissonance I've had my entire career, if it can be called that. On the one hand, it would be a lot of fun to work with him. I'd get to work on interesting stuff, things that would get me out of bed in the morning. On the other hand, there's a lot of risk working in small companies (which I know from experience), and a lot of disadvantages. He can just about match my salary here, but probably not the benefits. Career growth? Where is there to be promoted when you work for the owner and there's 5 other people in the office? And forget about networking, unless you do it through some other organization. Nobody will know the brilliance that is you... er, me. I spent the first four years of my career working at a succession of small firms (the biggest has 110 employees at its peak), working on interesting stuff, but not doing much else. When the last small firm capsized in rough waters, I was cut adrift, looking for yet another job not four months after I'd gotten that one. I decided enough was enough, and I went hunting for a big firm position.

You see, I had been avoiding big firms like the bubonic plague since my co-op at Coca-Cola the summer after I graduated from college. Yes, that was a long nine years ago. My experiences there (and interning as an undergrad for a government agency) convinced me that I'd wither away and die inside a big firm, and I would never be happy there. And so that drove my choices for a long time.

But then, real life intervened. Having remarkably unstable employers and absolutely no career advancement to show for four years of interesting work, I had bigger fish to fry. Stability is important, and trying to explain in interviews why I had four jobs in four years and that I wasn't a flight risk was becoming increasingly difficult. I decided to bite the bullet and go for the big firm.

And so far, it's been good to me in some ways and stiflingly banal in others. Although I still feel behind the curve in my career, I finally got a promotion. I get to do things that are more "business" oriented, which is good for my ultimate career development, especially since I'm about to begin an MBA program in a couple of weeks, trying to shift my career from techie drone to greedy boss/entrepreneur.

And yet, this job is so boring at times. My close friends joke about my incredibly lax attendance habits, because I can (and do actually) work from home, and when I come into the office, no one cares what time I get here. Simply put, it doesn't get me out of the bed in the morning. The offer from the architect in the restaurant, while ultimately not a move I would make, sure sounded tempting. I just have to remember that I have a long range plan that doesn't involve working on anything, interesting or otherwise, for other people until I am 75 (which is probably how old I'll have to be to collect Social Security, if there is anything left by then).

posted by Rainmayun at 12:22 PM -