I think maybe I can answer these all at once. I suppose much of it might be driven by ego, a desire for career growth, increased compensation/financial security, a bit of peer rivalry, and/or a desire to not spin my wheels wasting my time doing something I may not really have an aptitude for.
I think what I need is perhaps something a bit more structured and stable. My firm is too much abstractly defined projects where they dump you in the back-office of some bank and hope for the best. The first 2.5 years working here it was fine. I seemed to do a good job at whatever they wanted me to do and my performance and compensation reflected that. That past year and a half however not so much.
First I spent 6 months on “the bench” where I would get staffed to a client but then they would cancel the contract for budget reasons before I could start. Not my fault at all, but my numbers still suck for the year so no raise or bonus.
Then the past year I spent months on a crappy toxic client with a crappy empty suit of a manager and got my first ever shitty performance review at this firm. Then I rolled onto a project that was much better that was supposed to last a year or more. But then the client fired our firm for cost reasons. So no raise or bonus this year.
On top of that, the business group I was part of slowly deteriorated over the past couple of years to where it’s finally been dissolved. So it practical terms, that means going from a defined organization where I helped carve out something specific we “sell” both to clients and internally to basically a free for all where any of us are fair game to get tossed onto whatever project shows up next in the pipeline.
So ultimately I think that’s the main thing I want to change. That constant emotional rollercoaster of going from client to client as what is essentially a glorified temp worrying if the client isn’t going to like me, if I’m not going to have any expertise in the subject matter, whether the salespeople/partners didn’t understand what they undersold, will my manager (assuming I even have one) be a jerk, is the client suddenly going to run out of budget, or any of a million other reasons why our projects get cancelled so I can go back to wallowing on the bench wondering how long I have until the firm decides to fire me.