Work: Happiness or Stability?

[JoyIsLikeRain]

Long story short, I’ve finally been able to get a new job at a different department. It’s a technology department. The people seem nice.

Now I found another department that I know needs someone in marketing, which I like, but I haven’t worked in marketing in years. They lost people during lay-offs last year, and now are rebuilding their staff.

The tech group, at least one of them likes me, and there’s a lot of growth and things to learn there.

What would you do, the “happy” department, or the “stable” department?

 

[tawny]

Where would you feel most intellectually challenged & able to use your talents/expertise?

 

[Erikaspirit16]

I can’t tell which is the happy dept. and which is the stable dept.!

I think “stability” died out somewhere in the 1960s. It’s gone and buried. An illusion.

Two quick examples: Once I was cleaning out my boss’s office after he got fired. I found an old photo with various VPs. None of them were there anymore–nor did I recognize any, although I had been there 7-8 years, and the photo wasn’t more than 10 years old. I showed it to my new boss (a VP) and said, “Look at these people. None of them lasted more than a few years. How long do you think you’ll last?” (He lasted about 3 years…)

We had an IT dept. "Friendly"as you say. The head left for some reason and they hired a black guy. Within 6 months the entire dept. was black. The head got fired. They hired a Chinese guy. Within 6 months all the blacks were gone and the entire dept. was Chinese. Stability?

I’d go for whatever job gave me the best chance of getting yet another job down the road.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I agree that no job is ever going to be 100% stable. Don’t underrate being happy at work, you can only go to work miserable for so long before it starts taking a serious toll on your mental health.

 

[EasterJoy]

I can’t know and it wouldn’t matter if I did.

This is your life. There isn’t a single correct answer to your question.

I am in the middle of a good book on the psychology of this kind of a question, though. It is titled “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work” Chip & Dan Heath

Here are a few tidbits, as an example

a) You will get the most satisfactory answer if you consider a major question in the broadest terms possible, rather than as an “up/down” question. Not “should I leave my current position or not?” but more like “what are my employment options, and what does each one have going for it? Based on that, what position do I want to pursue, and how?”

b) More applicable to your immediate question, there is the 10/10/10 test:
If I make this decision in a certain way, how will I feel ten minutes from now?
How do I think I will feel about that decision 10 months from now?
How do I think I will feel about that decision 10 years from now?
Of the three, the first question tells you more what your immediate fears or hopes are, whereas the other questions help you look at your thoughts in a longer and longer term. No one perspective is right. They’re just different points of view for you to consider.

c) oh, and they also have a concept called “scooching.” It is when you find a way to test an idea as a prototype. That might not be practical in your case, but as an example if you got a day or a few afternoons going over to the new department to see what kind of projects they’re working on or even got one project to do before you made a full-on commitment, that would be “scooching.”

The library probably has that title. You could take it home for a weekend and perhaps get a better look at your own mind.

 

[Anglewannabe]

The first thing I personally would do is pray for God’s guidance.

 

[Bill_Martin]

I’d rather take a position where I’m happy, even if it might not last, than a position where I’m going to be miserable for the long haul.

 

[chevalier]

Grass is greener… There’s always going to be a hunger in one, due to one’s unfulfilled hobbies, past interests, previous and alternative job lines. It may be a bit like that military pilot Harmon Rabb from the JAG series on the TV who got a desk job and eventually was able to go back to flying but realized he was long past it, couldn’t make a future there and was good at his desk job.

Plus, if they’re rebuilding their staff after layoffs last year, they still had layoffs last year. They may be unable to retain their employees for some reason, or just have problems with liquidity.

I wouldn’t risk a stable job to get back in touch with some lingering part of the old me at the cost of potentially making it a very temporary engagement and with no way back to my current stable job.

I know a bit about those things first-hand, as I’ve done a couple of different jobs, different professions even. At some point one has to choose. And temptations are treacherous.