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Wellness Wednesday for September 7, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Starting a new job in two weeks. Pretty excited because the comp is so much higher than I have now. I'm anxious that I'm totally unqualified (it's a drastically different role than I've had for the last 5 years), but can you imagine not taking a risk like that?

The downsides* are that I'll struggle and require half a year to figure out the basics if the job. The upsides are that I'll be challenged and forced to learn new things and I'll be paid more for it. The unknown-sides are that I'm not sure what it means for my career trajectory afterwards. Seems irrational not to take the risk.

*leaving out the failure and firing scenario since I think it carries way too much psychological weight for how unlikely it probably is.

I’ve changed jobs pretty frequently these last 8 years or so, 4 different workplaces in all since I graduated. I’ve moved industries and disciplines along the way, and have a plan to change discipline again in about 2-3 years from now. It has been both for better pay, and for things I just find more interesting and personally rewarding.

I think my biggest takeaway was to look ahead at your career path when moving. A new position can leverage the next, and some organizations are better for your future than others. Same for the size of the industry, and even the title that you can put on your resume. Same goes for how your salary will increase in your new job. I had to do my last move strictly for monetary gains, and the deciding factor for me was the pace of increase in my new job vs. the one I left. The old place did offer to match, but looking ahead it would still have been a loss for me.

Don't most of the faangs do refresher grants on promotions/ for staff they want to keep? If not I would always recommend jumping to another company but taking 6 months or so to figure out carefully what to do next and get a valuable offer.