A friend of mine who has a very fine job recently asked me, and a couple of other friends, how we decide when to take a new job. The issue came up because he was made an out-of-the-blue offer from a company he knows, but he isn’t looking and has, in fact, only been at his current job a relatively short while (less than two years).
It’s a good question, and since I made another jump early this year I thought I’d go through my list to review…
My current job is, I hope, a dream job. I don’t think there’s only one, but when I left my previous full-time gig, I made a list of the companies I wanted to work for. There were two companies on it: SpaceX and Disney, and SpaceX was far and away the #1. So I sent a resume, and about eight months later I started here.
That approach has, however, been an anomaly. It was actually fun to go remember why I take new jobs. For one thing, I can tell you, I’ve never left a job for more money (in fact a few of my moves were definitely pay reducing). I find that interesting. Here’s how the rest of my career path went, chronologically:
