Navigating the Crossroads: Strategies for Job Transition Dilemmas

Household chores and next week prep pending, presentations to be made, exercise to completed and much more and I decide to pen down another post. Tells a lot about my priorities and activities I like to do :P

There are numerous tools, videos, posts available to make resume, how to negotiate, interview tips and what not — I am not going to cover any of that in this post. I am going to cover more on self-talk and dilemma most of us face when finally the offer letter is out and you are about to send out a resignation letter.

When you start looking out for a job — you have 2–3 reasons to quit — may be location, salary, job profile, culture or just for freshness — everyone will have their reasons — I had mine too. Anyway — I have had many people coming to me in dilemma if they should take the next step or not — or to help them decide and at certain point in time I had my doubts and concerns in deciding on making a job switch.

I generally recommend few of the below tools/techniques —

Schrodinger’s cat — most of us know about Schrodinger’s cat — ‘It proposes a scenario where a cat inside a sealed box is simultaneously alive and dead until observed, highlighting the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics where particles can exist in multiple states until measured, collapsing the wave function to a single outcome.’ In Big Bang theory Penny was asking Sheldon that, Should Penny and Leonard be together again, and Sheldon said about Schrodinger’s cat, you are not sure about cat until you open it. Likewise, all predictions, stats and speculations on one side, and practical stuffs on one side. You won’t know if your switch was good or bad, until you make that switch.

It can be good, and it can be bad — only way to know that is to make a switch. Now — this doesn’t help you come to a yes/no answer — but it does tell you that don’t assume next switch will be bad and you should not make it — go for it and experience.

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Bucket List — There is a movie named bucket list and in that there is one actor on the verge of death, and he has list of 10 things he want to do. He then tells his other friend to make a list — 10 best things in life or so. There was one point saying — Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world — then later in the movie he meets his grand daughter — kisses her on forehead and strikes of the item from his bucket list — I Loved that part ❤

Now, coming to our problem — write down 10 best things that will happen in your current role — write it down to see what you will miss (to the best of your knowledge) and write down 10 worst things that will happen if you make a switch. So, if your sure — that you can handle the worst and won’t miss out the best of current role — then you can make a switch. I had a mental note of few things I may miss if I leave and it has been 1 year and nothing of those projects materialised in my previous role. At the same time — I got much more than I bargained for over here. This doesn’t mean you should always switch but will help you look at both opportunities with different lens and make a wholehearted decision.

Algorithm — This is bit unconventionally but mostly few if-else statements and I will have to make one up now just to explain the case. We will take a simple case — suppose you want to work in autonomous driving solutions/technologies and in your current company that may or may not happen and something similar in next company. Say Current is your current company and New is the new opportunity.

if 'Autonomous Work' in New == TRUE
  Go for 'New'
else
  if 'No Autonomous Work' in Current - after few years == TRUE
    Go for 'New'
  else if 'Autonomous Work' in Current in Long Run also == TRUE
    Stay in 'Current'
  else
    Go for 'New'
  end
end

This shows It may be good to make a switch. You can talk to people in both companies to understand probability of Autonomous Driving work in both and then use above code to make a better decision.

Coin flip — They say if you have two options to choos from — then flip a coin and when coin is in the air — you may hear a voice inside you saying or hoping for a particular side to come up and then you know where your Heart wants to go. I have never used it and have never heard a real world example where this was useful — but you can give it a try.

Let me know what tools and techniques you used during a similar techniques and what are your thoughts on the above ones.