Early-stage career regret and what to do about it
September 28, 2013 5:19 PM   Subscribe

Recently, fresh out of school, I had two job offers. One was a dream job in Silicon Valley and the other was a job with a team I had worked with before. For what I now see as stupid reasons, I took the second job. But two months in, I wake up every morning kicking myself for turning down my dream job. I'm unsure what to do...

So I have a bad case of career regret right now. Allow me to explain...

Recently, I was a PhD student in a science-related field. Good funding situation, successful at publishing. My research was applied and closely related to work in industry. But due to a poor advisor, I made the choice to leave the program. I don't regret this decision at all -- it's the job choice that came next.

I applied to a few companies and got offers before quitting the PhD. It came down to two. One is a large industrial player in my field, and I had actually done a graduate internship there before. I liked the team, my boss was awesome (fair, understanding, reasonable), and as an added bonus, the job is in a city very close to my hometown, with reasonable cost of living, etc.

The second place I applied is a software company in Silicon Valley. Why? My work in the PhD involved writing a lot of research software, and I actually enjoyed this as much as the science itself. I've always seen myself as a software guy with domain knowledge in this other field, whereas colleagues mostly seemed to be scientists first who grudgingly hacked code, and I felt that mismatch a bit before but couldn't really put a finger on it. But as I had thought about leaving the PhD, being a software engineer sounded like a really nice dream job, whereas I was sort of getting tired of my field.

Fast forward a bit, I got both offers, and both were very good financially. I had people on both sides trying to woo me. I felt a sort of loyalty and almost obligation toward the team I had done the internship in my field with -- sort of, "they worked really hard to get me an offer, and the boss is awesome, it's hard to say no, how could I give that up?" But then I also had a sort of gut feeling that the software company would have the more interesting work. I think I would fit better culturally there too (the company in my field is very top-down and bureaucratic, which can be frustrating). But then cost of living, and settling near family… But then the SF bay is a more interesting area and a lot of friends are there… anyway, I went back and forth for a few weeks, and eventually, on the deadline, I psyched myself up and, based on "good boss, lower cost of living, near family, stuff I know how to do", and against my gut feeling, I committed to the company in my field.

Almost immediately I felt pangs of regret. I gave up my dream. I feel like I took the easy, comfortable, familiar option out of a combination of (misguided) loyalty and fear-of-the-unknown, and a strange sense that I should plan for the further future (buying a house, settling near family long term) even though I'm still young. I knew at some level that I would regret it, but I forced myself into it anyway, against gut feeling, because… I don't know, it seemed like the "wiser" option, or so I told myself. But I stupidly gave up a huge opportunity. And in hindsight, I see all the obvious signs I ignored that pointed the other way.

So now here's where I stand. I've been at the job a few months. All the things I remember from the internship (but suppressed somehow) are still true: it's still a stifling corporate job, and my team is great but I'm not so passionate about the work. I ignored my gut feeling. All the reasons I told myself for choosing this way seem hollow. Fortunately it's not a lifetime commitment, and I know what I have to do eventually. I'm the type of person who has a job as an identity and a source of fulfillment, not just a way to pay the bills, so I don't want to suffer here longer than necessary.

What I'm struggling with now is how long to stay and how to forgive myself until then. I don't want to screw over the team now that I actually work here. And I sort of feel stuck for a bit, too, because a few of my references were from people here (due to the prior internship) so I can't really burn a bridge. But how long do I wait? What do I say when I eventually go? How do you deal with this sort of regret? Am I right to even regret it? Finally, how do people made decisions to avoid regrets like this? I feel like I could have done a lot better.
posted by anonanimal to Work & Money (12 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
When you eventually go, you say that you're taking another position. You don't need to make a speech or offer any explanation.

As to what to do until then, you're in a bit of a pickle. It sounds like you're really worried about burning bridges. If that's the case, stick it out for six months to a year. Think of it as extra experience that will help your future applications.

Another option is to speak frankly to your supervisor. Sit down, and tell him you find your self unmotivated, and you wanted to see if the two of you could find a way to make the work more engaging for you. It's your boss's job to keep you wanting to come to work every morning.

It's hard to go wrong with brutal honesty.
posted by colin_l at 5:42 PM on September 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's okay. You didn't listen to your heart, and you made a choice that makes sense on paper but isn't right for you, and now your heart is telling you, and you're listening. This is great. Within a month you could be living in SF working in tech and you would KNOW it's the right choice, and you wouldn't even have to list this job on your resume because your time there would be so short. Your job now is to chase your dream. Give your employers a reasonable amount of your energy and dedicate the rest to your future.

I'm serious, you know. Here is the internal script that both lets you forgive yourself and explain what's happening: "The job I just started at turned out to be a poor fit, and once I realized that I started looking for work". Start looking for work in Silicon Valley right now -- there is lots of opportunity. Quit as soon as you get and accept a new offer. The faster this happens, the happier you will be, and the happier the company will be, because they will be better off with someone who is happy and excited about the job. Don't worry about them; there are lots of people looking for work in this job market.

Step one: tell the company that offered you a job that your current position is not working out and you are available right now, in case they have any positions available right now (they might!). Step two: get on the job boards and networks and see what you can find. Step three: if you don't get any success or are unwilling to jump ship right away, think longer-term -- work on building a portfolio of software projects and github contributions in your spare time that will make you obviously employable to your dream companies in the SF bay, and target moving there in 6 months to a year.
posted by PercussivePaul at 5:48 PM on September 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


Just this weekend I was cleaning out my bookshelf, and came across The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, which recommended something that I did early in my switch from research to industry: start with a Big Company.

You can learn a ton from people who have been in the sector / company for years (even decades), you can build a network of people who can respect your work (in a small company environment it's a very different landscape), you can take advantage of Big Company training, and take advantage of other Big Company resources.

You don't want to be 'that guy' whose resume reflects jumping around. 2 years is about the minimum, others may argue 1 year, but if your work is complex enough (and software development definitely fits that description) it can take a full year before you understand the parameters and necessary skills needed for your current position to be fully effective in it, and then the second year work on actually accomplishing something.

(I don't mean to sound harsh, but I come across ambitious people all the time who think that they can accelerate their effectiveness, but it is a darn competitive world out there, that's changing all the time, so all I do is wish them 'good luck'.)

And in those two years if you make your mark in the Big Company you will have a lot more to offer to Small Startup. And Small Startup will pay for that kind of track record and experience.

I'd recommend making some smaller adjustments in your current situation to make your stay there more interesting / engaging / challenging / stimulating. A few months isn't long enough for you to find a senior 'mentor-type' person to advise you on how to best navigate this, but see if you can't find someone. (If your Big Company is any good, there will be a roster of very talented individuals who have worked hard and smart to get to where they are, and often are open to coaching. You don't know until you start building relationships across the organization, which you can't do if you've only been at it for a few months.)

By the way, as a native Californian I can say that the exorbitant real estate market is absolutely crazy, and you can find several threads here that reflect that frustration. (This one states a good 40% higher than what you can get in Florida, and I wouldn't disagree with that number. "House rich, cash poor" is a reality in California for many people, and if you can make it work, that's great.
posted by scooterdog at 6:46 PM on September 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks everyone for the input so far. I have a lot to think about as I decide what to do.

I should mention as a point of clarification that the software option I had was actually not a Small Startup but a fairly sizeable company as well (they do search...). I've heard the "start with a big company" advice, but this is why I'm sort of kicking myself because this particular large software company is also known as a very good place to start a career... yes, I know, I made a poor choice.
posted by anonanimal at 7:11 PM on September 28, 2013


Best answer: You can't know that you made a bad choice. You just can't know that. Because there is no way to recreate the counterfactual in which you take the other job to see if you would have been happier there. Maybe your supervisor there would have been mean. Maybe you would have hated the work. Maybe you would have sucked at the job and gotten fired. Maybe you would have gotten in a car accident on your way to your first day of work and lost your memory and be wandering the streets right now with no idea who you are, like in a bad TV movie. There's just no way to know what would have happened. So you have no idea whether you made a bad choice in not taking the other job.

The only thing you can know is whether you like your current job. Not whether you like it in comparison to your idealized vision of the other job: just whether you like it. It sounds like maybe you don't, so you need to figure out how to move forward from that. But I think that the first step in moving forward is letting go of the idea that you made a choice to give up a perfect thing in favor of this sucky thing, and that you gave up the perfect thing because you are a bad choice-maker, and that your life would be a million times better if only... Beating yourself up isn't going to help you find a job you like, and second-guessing yourself this way is likely to make it harder for you to take risks and recover from mistakes and be happy with your present all your life.
posted by decathecting at 7:31 PM on September 28, 2013 [5 favorites]


Best answer: Rereading your original post, you mention you have a good boss. (Hmm, 'awesome' is mentioned twice.)

A good boss will have your back (so to speak), a good boss will do everything he/she can to see you succeed, and a good boss won't be threatened with the things that you do better than him/her, but will rather leverage it for the good of everyone (and the company).

Awesome? Well, I'd say an awesome boss would be catapulting up the org chart within record time and taking you with him/her right up the organization. But anyway...

Ask for a quarterly review (most Big Companies have a required yearly review where the employee contributes their self-assessment; some will have mandatory 6-month reviews; and usually there is an HR mechanism for quarterly reviews left up to the discretion of the employee), and get your stuff together.

What you've done so far, what went well, what went not so well, what you'd prefer to be different, what you'd like to be working on, you name it. All with the intent for the furthering of the goal(s) of your boss / group / division / company, this is what alignment is about. No complaining here, just a forum to point out where you'd like to spend more effort and time on, and to get priorities (and non-priorities) straight.

From what you've stated about the basis of your decision, you went with the group you knew well and with the people you liked and respected.

I am like you - I have a job that's a large part of my identity and fulfillment, not just a place where I spend most of my days to collect a paycheck. And you have a chance here to 'just make it work out' by taking the initiative to identify what's causing the angst and doing something about it.
posted by scooterdog at 8:10 PM on September 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you're talking about the software company I think you're talking about, they are basically always hiring and it may be the case that they'll even let you skip some or all of the interview process because you got an offer so recently. Get in touch with your recruiter.
posted by town of cats at 8:40 PM on September 28, 2013 [3 favorites]


What I'm struggling with now is how long to stay and how to forgive myself until then. I don't want to screw over the team now that I actually work here.

I'm with PercussivePaul: ASAP is the right answer here. Look at it this way: if all goes well for you in your current job, you will only become more valuable and integral to your firm the longer you wait to leave -- and you'll do more damage when you do leave.

Get back in touch with Large Search Company right away. I work in software (though not for Large Search Company) and we have to interview a ton of people to find one we want to make an offer too. When our candidates decline, we generally don't lose interest in them. Talented, employable people are rare enough that we'll take them almost any way we can get them.

What do I say when I eventually go?

"I want to try something different."

Good people will support you when they see you moving in a direction that makes you happy.

Am I right to even regret it?

It's not about being "right" or not. Your feelings are your feelings, they exist independently of right and wrong and correctness, and you're stuck with them for now. Don't judge your regret.

Try this: regret is a negative emotion. Holding yourself in contempt because of that regret is a second negative emotion atop the original regret. Feeling bad for feeling bad is kind of a classic paralysing downward spiral. (I think negative emotions aren't additive, I think they multiply.)

You're going to make a ton of mistakes in your life. Self-forgiveness is a worthy thing to learn!

Finally, how do people made decisions to avoid regrets like this? I feel like I could have done a lot better.

Practice. If you're just starting out your career, you're going to face choices like this from time to time. Next time you'll be better at this! You'll have seen more and will know more about what you want and who you are and you'll be naturally more confident and decisive.

Good luck!
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:24 AM on September 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you can get the job you want still, I don't see why you shouldn't leave now. You don't owe your current company anything. The biggest consideration there is that you may need to be prepared to stick with your new job for at least two years, because you don't want to look like a job hopper.
posted by J. Wilson at 5:09 AM on September 29, 2013


Get in touch with your recruiter at the software company. Often in house recruiters are happy to have someone like you turn around and ask about an offer they turned down recently, IF the circumstances were amiable. (If a candidate was dishonest or hostile, then we just laugh. But if it was something like "this is a hard choice, but I feel like I owe it to my friends to give their offer a chance" and then two months later we get a call saying "I regret not taking your offer, and wanted to let you know that I'd take it if it were re-extended" then things may very well work out, and you wouldn't even need to list the two month gig on your resume years from now.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:27 AM on September 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


Get back in touch with Large Search Company right away. I work in software (though not for Large Search Company) and we have to interview a ton of people to find one we want to make an offer too. When our candidates decline, we generally don't lose interest in them. Talented, employable people are rare enough that we'll take them almost any way we can get them.

I work at what I'd assume is the Large Search Company in question here, and this is certainly the case. If you were looking at a specific group before then they might have filled whatever position(s) they had available, but you shouldn't have too much trouble getting an offer back on the table.
posted by ethand at 9:11 AM on September 29, 2013


You've just taken this job for now. You can apply to other jobs, and you'll eventually end up taking one of those jobs, maybe even at the same company that made you that offer before. Maybe you'll be able to start at higher salary than you otherwise would, or find an even more interesting job than the initial offer you declined.

Focus on what's good about where you are now while you are there. Lower cost of living -- so save up, because you will need that money for moving. Near family -- spend as much time as you can with your family now, while you have the opportunity.

Am I right to even regret it?

Feelings are not "right" or "wrong".

Finally, how do people made decisions to avoid regrets like this?

They don't.

There are always other paths you could have taken. There are always things to regret. You could have taken the other job and a few years later be wishing you'd spent more time with your family, and you might regret not spending more time with your family and the higher cost of living after you change jobs.

The path you choose, it's easy to see the obstacles and the negatives. The path you didn't take, it's easy to think about all the good things that would have been on it... but you don't know, you can't know, what would happen. You could have taken the bay area job and died in a horrible car wreck on the freeway a week later.

All you can do is make the best choice you can at the time you are making it. This includes taking into account your gut feelings. You observe things around you all the time, and even if you can't quite put them down on a list of + and -, it's still information that you have that you can use to make choices.
posted by yohko at 1:26 PM on September 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


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