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Adulting - work search

I started job hunting a couple of months ago. My current role is stable, but there's no room for progression or salary increase, and with the job cuts at the end of last year there's also no chance of adequate resourcing in my area of work in my current organisation - which has been an issue that myself and other devs have been flagging for well over a year now, resulting in many digital people leaving and those of us left being stretched too thin to be able to deliver our work whilst maintaining reasonable work levels. I'm currently working as a jack of all trades across a whole suite of digital products that need managing and upkeep. So the long and short is: I've started looking for work.

There's two potential job offers on the cards for me right now, both the same job title that reflects the kind-of progression I'm aiming for - and they have similar salaries. One offer was just made to me, and the other I *suspect* may be on the way but is taking some time. So I've had to request a bit of time before confirming the first and I've prompted the (potential) second offer to see if they might be able to get back to me even sooner.

So my task for this weekend is to try and weigh up how I would feel if I were to have both offers on the table, and see if that can help guide what direction I would ideally want to go. I mean, I say all this but maybe there's even a third option to continue job-hunting... but to be honest I've got a good feel from both the options on the table and they both present the right progression I need right now. There's a few nuances and differences between the two options that I'm trying to weigh against eachother and see how I feel. The main one that I'm coming up against is that one of the roles is agency-side, whereas I've always previously worked in-house, client-side. And even though the agency-side role (this is the offer that hasn't actually been made just yet) is really cool in many ways, and presents more opportunities for longer-term ongoing progression than the other option, I'm realising I'm somewhat weary of working agency side. There's something about external pressures that I imagine may be more tricky to manage than just internal pressures/challenges. And I think getting clarity on how I feel about this point will be the thing that will help me feel confident about my preference.

Its tough because I feel like in the long-run, career-wise, I would like an environment that is agency side, or even more independently freelance, but I feel right now I need to build up my confidence a little bit more in my field before I'd feel *even more* confident to move agency/freelance. That said, I've had a somewhat meandering career trajectory so far which has meant I'm a little bit 'behind' where I ideally should be. None of this is me aiming for seniority btw - I don't care about anything like that. Its more just... I live in a city with an incredibly high cost-of-living and sooner or later I need to up my income to live comfortably rather than in tiny rooms in shared accommodation (my current situation).

I guess this is a good problem rather than a bad one. But I would really love my mind to get clarity on which road to go down.

! flow

Tags: #work #worksearch #precarity