I have been withdrawn from consideration for Job C, so at Job A I remain until further notice.
Crap. Sorry to hear that.
But good that you’ve played it silent with Job A (& B) to this point.
I’m sorry but at least you sparked a good discussion.
Ugh. I tell my team if they want to do something else and there’s a way to leverage their current role to get there, let’s do it. I had a guy who wanted to be a professor. That’s not an experience my consulting team offers. But we were able to put him on relevant (to his dreams) projects for a couple years. He just got tenure.
I actually use him as an example when I’m recruiting. Yes, some people stick around for a decade plus, but if you don’t, you’re going to meet a lot of people and learn a ton along the way.
It’s not completely altruistic. The robust alumni network makes parts of my job easier.
This is true. At one point my chairman encouraged me to look for outside offers because it was the only way he could get me a significant raise. I had come to him with an offer and told him that I had no intention of accepting it (it was in Texas) but he took it to the dean and got me a raise anyway.
Unless you’re in some hyper specialized field, just about anything you learn that’s useful for your current employer is going to be useful for a different employer. In the last decade, I’ve picked up a myriad of skills that I can transfer to just about any other employer. I’m happy with my current employer though.
It’s fine because it doesn’t really cost me anything. But it does raise red flags with me in that I don’t know if Company B is a good long term bet. In other words, they would appear to only be able to support one employee at my level on this one particular client. And then what happens if that client cuts funding suddenly (as they often do)? Basically they are a tiny version of my old company.
So the play here is basically I’m transparent about accepting a contract gig from Company A but it’s open ended. It can end anytime. So if Company B needs some time to land this deal, I can help them such as it doesn’t interfere with my work and we can revisit in a few weeks or months (or never).
There’s also Company C now. A friend of mine who is more or a tech PM went on this interview with a big Wall Street bank for a job that wasn’t even posted yet. He felt it was way out of his depth but the more we talked about it the more it sounded exactly what I do. So he introduced me which quickly led to a couple of very positive interviews/discussions. So instead of being a consultant, I would be the sort of executive who hires people like me. Which sounds kind of cool.
Only down side it’s 4 days in the office. But it’s a super easy commute.
Anyhow, you would think it’s a good problem to have but I find this all very stressful. It’s never like “ok lets do a side by side apples to apples comparison”. It’s more like finding the right combo of comp, culture, work/life, and what not so I’m not looking for another job in a few months. And the offers don’t come in at once so there’s the pressure of holding out for a bigger better deal vs not killing the bird in hand.
As it relates to the OP, I think it’s ok to apply a little leverage to show a) I’m not sitting idle and b) there is demand for my skills
For sure the timing is ugly.
A comment I trot out in many different situations over my life is that
There are no easy decisions. They all involve picking the least-bad choice from set of choices composed of largely incomparable factors. It’s not because the universe hates us. It’s because any decision where there’s a range of good and readily comparable choices happens so automatically we don’t even see it as a decision.
It’s not strictly true like the Law of Gravity, but it fits one heck of a lot of the decisions in my life. And it sounds like yours too.
Sheesh, anyone who knows all that should be CEO already.
Or is demonstrating that they’re CEO material.
All that said, I HATE applying for new jobs. Being a working stiff is always going to suck, and nothing will make it not suck. So once I’ve got a job, I stay in it until I’m fired.
Years ago when I was in business school, I took a job in the IT department at the headquarters of a retail clothing company. It was very low-stress compared to the consulting firm I had just left.
On day my manager had asked me to help with some data modelling / data cleaning work and I happened to be pretty good at SQL. At least I was a lot better at it than my older colleagues. This one guy was so bent out of shape at how good I was he bitched about how I was making him “look bad” for a couple weeks before rage quitting. Like WTF dude. I’m just doing what my boss asked. I wasn’t even really pushing myself super hard. I was just really good at it because my last job I was working 10+ hour days writing code and SQL scripts with a bunch of MIT nerds.
I guess that’s why I always tended to work in consulting firms and tech companies. No one gives you shit for going above and beyond or implementing new tech to make your job easier. It’s also IMHO why a lot of people who come from “industry” don’t do well at tech companies. They sit around and wait to be told by their manager what to do instead of figuring out problems to solve.
That’s really clever! That explains why all my decisions seem so hard.