Thursday, November 17, 2022

Almost Thanksgiving Thoughts

It has been awhile! I, like many people on Twitter, have been watching Twitter the company self-destruct. Or, more accurately, be destroyed by their new CEO. I said on Twitter that the place to find me when it goes belly up is here, because I may actually just pull back from social media altogether. There are things I'll miss and things I won't miss and I'm not in the right headspace to go set up someplace else right now. Everyone seems to be heading to Mastodon but I may not go anywhere. We'll see.

I don't much care if Musk destroys Twitter, but if his ego and over-reach also manages to take out Tesla I'll be pretty mad. Not so much for me - we can buy a new car if we need to - but for the fact that Tesla still has the best charging infrastructure and that's what we need to make the electric transition. People who think than range doesn't matter need to drive from San Diego to Phoenix sometime and see what range actually means! Mr. Snarky is much more sanguine and figures that if Musk's chaos reaches Tesla, their board will replace him or they will get bought. He's probably right. I don't have the mental space to give much thought to that right now, either.

Almost all of my mental space is being consumed by a career decision I need to make. Everyone who matters knows this is going on (even my boss and my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss... long story how that happened but it involves beer) and so I decided I can write a little more about it here.

So, as I mentioned in the last post (several months ago)... I stopped saying "no" when people reached out to me about other opportunities and I ended up with 4 different possibilities. I got pretty far with all of them - one went away after a final interview and I can't disagree with their decision not to proceed based on where my head is at right now. Another I decided wasn't a fit, even though a few years ago I would have jumped at it. I am left with two really good options and (because of the aforementioned long story involving beer) a really strong counteroffer from my current employer.

Reader, I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Like NONE. Ask me on a different day - hell, ask me in a different hour - and I have a different front runner.

All three options in front of me are good. The offers all involve a significant pay raise and substantial equity. The potential equity upside on all of them is good and on one of them is sort of mind-blowingly huge (that one is also the least likely to pay out, of course). 

This is an amazing situation to be in and I don't for a minute take it for granted. I've been out of work with no offers before and this is by far a better situation. I am so fortunate and am already charity shopping to figure out where the guilt check goes once this is all sorted out.

Still. I have no idea which offer I will take and that is stressing me out.

I have asked for and received a little extra time to make this decision from all three parties. They all know I have other offers because once the aforementioned situation with the beer put me into a radical transparency situation with my current company's senior leadership I figured I might as well extend the same courtesy to everyone. Everyone has been gracious and understanding and I actually truly believe they all wish me the best no matter what I decide.

(Back to that WOW. I AM LUCKY feeling)

Sooo... anyhow, that's what I've been up to and why I can't get my head around finding a new home on social media or much of anything else right now.

Also, the great bra search continues and I have determined I was wrong about what size I thought I was and if I get stupidly rich from any of these options in front of me maybe I should start a bra company. Seems a better way to blow a fortune than sinking a social media company because my feelings were hurt, but then I'm no tech genius so what do I know?

I hope you are all well and I'll let you know how it all turns out in the same oblique minimal details way I've written this post!

12 comments:

  1. Well that's awesome, I'm really happy that you have choices! I hope we hear the beer story sometime but also that you feel at peace with whatever choice you make.

    If your guilt check wants to join the Lakota project, we'd be happy to have it ;) But I also hope we'll see you elsewhere too (see your DMs).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I will definitely send some money to your Lakota project. I've been meaning to do that! I'm sure you've posted this elsewhere and once the dust settles and my brain isn't like 8000 little birds flying in different directions I will go find that... but if you want to post here how to donate that would save me some time! And maybe inspire some others to donate, too.

      Delete
    2. Happy to make this easier for you! All the updates for this Thanksgiving/Native Heritage month fundraising and purchasing are housed here now: http://agaishanlife.com/agsl-giving/

      Delete
  2. Good to hear you have options! How is your current employer addressing issues from before (where you were promised advancement but ended up being sidelined and your friend promoted over you). Are they clued in how they fucked up? Are you getting apologies? Explanations? Actual commitment as part of your retention offer? I know you were pretty unhappy in the last several work posts, so I am wondering if they managed to redeem themselves in your eyes, and, if yes, how they did it.

    In any case, very happy that you have so many great options right now!

    (Unrelated random question, since I need it for the novel, and to diffuse all the gloom: When does the tourist season start to wane in San Diego? Is it September? Later? Thanks!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We have a couple different tourist seasons - summer, which is dominated by Arizonans escaping the heat and coming to the beach, and winter, which is dominated by people from cold places escaping the cold and coming to the beach. Summer tourist season starts to wind down in late August when the Arizona school systems head back to school. September is the month locals consider to be the best - still warm enough for us SoCal wimps to go to the beach and swim without a wetsuit, most of the tourists are gone. October is still nice, but by late October most locals only go in the water in a wetsuit.

      To answer the question about how my current employer addressed all the issues - the short answer is a change in the leader of the department. If that change hadn't happened and the new person wasn't top notch, I wouldn't be considering staying. I also got apologies for what happened in March/April and the counteroffer fixes the problems I'd identified. I am frankly pretty surprised they've come back to be in contention but they've done a top notch job of addressing the concerns and I really, really like the person they hired to be the department leader.

      Delete
  3. Congratulations!!

    The nice thing about the situation you're in is that all of your options are good!

    I'm pretty bummed because things are going to be terrible next year at my work (the college president is crazy and that's actually affecting us and my department chair thinks I'm one of like 3 people in the department who does good service, even though she doesn't reward that at all, and we're hiring for SIX positions next year) and my escape hatch didn't pan out. There's an academic soft money position that wants me, but not until I get more funding, but how am I going to get more funding if I'm drowning under teaching and service? How am I ever going to leave if I don't have a top 5 journal article?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks!

      It is a bummer your escape hatch didn't pan out. That sucks. I suppose you could stop doing good service and focus on getting your top 5 journal article but I know I would have a hard time doing that in your situation.

      Delete
  4. Anonymous5:13 PM

    Oh this is actually great to hear!
    I too am wondering if perhaps I want more of my life back with no twitter. Though I had a whole thread blow up about trees and brains and it was fun and playful. But I had to mute a number of keywords of jerks to get my algorithm to work right.

    But anyway. I am excited for your opportunities! This job market is weird, the economy underlying it weirder, but there is a lot of legitimate growth in scientific fields and I can't help but feel like there *should* be some really great things out there. I hope whichever you end up with is great. I have the hardest time with these kinds of decisions, so I'm afraid I don't have any good advice on that part.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The only thing I’ll say is that if you say no to a good offer, it’s likely you can get it again in the future. There was a great internal job I was offered a number of years ago but I didn’t want to pigeon hole myself in that function. It was a big promotion but I said no. Well, I was offered that job 2 more times over the years. Decisions aren’t always one and done.

    Sounds like there is more than one right answer here. At this point in my career, I care more about work/life balance than anything else. I’d have a hard time working 60+ hours a week like I used to. Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous1:54 PM

    I’m so happy to hear that you’re getting three offers that are showing your worth. I am glad the leadership at current job finally recognized they can’t lose you, but why did it take almost leaving? How do you know similar failures won’t happen again?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are not guarantees, of course, but I don't think the same thing will happen again because there's been a change in leadership in the department and I trust the new leader.

      Delete
  7. Oh this is actually great to hear!
    I too am wondering if perhaps I want more of my life back with no twitter. Though I had a whole thread blow up about trees and brains and it was fun and playful. But I had to mute a number of keywords of jerks to get my algorithm to work right.

    ReplyDelete

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.