This may just turn into a brain dump that will not make too much sense.
I find myself at a fork in the road for my career. It feels similar to when I took my current role exactly 3 years ago. To start off, I am not super happy with my current position because I feel like I am not growing as quickly anymore. And that feels like a waste of my time and potential. After taking my leadership course last semester, I feel like I need to be focusing on pushing myself to gain skills that will allow me to ascend into leadership. Not only this, but I want to prove to myself that my skills can be transferrable to any position. What makes me a good employee is not my expertise but my thoughts and ideas. Or at least, that is what I hope. I also feel like I need to leave engineering. Maybe it is because I feel like most of the successful people have left their current departments long before the five-year mark. I suppose I should not compare myself to them. That said, making decisions like this one causes me to go into deep circles.
At this point, I have been scanning the new job postings a lot and I have had a few positions that I have thought about applying for. Each time I convince myself not to. I have told myself based on some spiritual/ mystical belief that I need to stay where I am. However, this position was different. It is part of a global team and reporting to someone I once said I would want to work for. The position wouldn’t require relocation, so it seemed like a no-brainer that I should apply and see where it would lead. At the very least, I needed to see if this was a direction I was meant to go. In my gut, it felt right to apply. This global team felt right. However, I was not sure about this position. Honestly, the role is not much different than what I do today. In fact, it is more specialized in some of the areas that I want to get away from. I have recently found myself saying that I want to get out of the technical side and start learning the business side. This role kind of pushes me towards a more IT supporter role. However, this is a “foot in the door” to an awesome global team and the position is supporting without requiring me to move.
When I applied, I expected that I would have time to think more about it. However, their HR works fast, and the next thing I knew I had interviews prepared within a week.
Outside of this, my leaders were working together to give me more responsibilities in my current role. If I do not take any new positions, the plan is to give me a direct report. I would still be doing a lot of what I do today, however, I could start learning how to do all the business administration that comes with managing someone. I mentioned to my leaders, that technically I have already managed two people (interns) briefly at one time. I did not do the technical stuff (raises/reviews), but I do not think there will be a whole lot of additional learnings by having just one report. It is different than managing five or ten people, but I suppose it is important to start somewhere. It will also be a good experience to not manage someone directly out of college or even someone that has an engineering background.
Additionally, this led to some conflict with how I have been feeling about applying for this other role. On one hand, my leaders are working hard to give me more responsibility and I am possibly jumping away to another opportunity. That shouldn’t be a reason to hold me back, but it is still something that weighs on me regardless.
I had a brief call with HR about the new role, and the recruiter said I have strong qualifications for this role. I told her that I was concerned about the growth opportunities and I wanted to learn more from the two hiring managers to understand better what my career trajectory could look like.
Immediately after this call, I went into a meeting with one of my leaders. We had an interesting discussion. I learned a bit about how he got his current role, and it involved him seeking an opportunity and building a business case. He then pitched it to his future boss. At that time, his role did not even exist. He sort of got the role created based on his own ambition. His drives and motivations were heavily around salary. Which I appreciated because it led to some candid tips on how to negotiate better — an area that I think I need to work on. Also, we chatted about leadership and getting an MBA. He pointed out that degrees are only good to help get a higher salary easier, but ultimately as long as someone is curious, they can go just as far. He said finding an engineer that is a good communicator is a rare find and he felt like I could really take on any role if I wanted to. Ultimately it would be up to me to decide if I wanted to gain more responsibilities while still doing most of what I do today, or if I want to take this new opportunity and step outside of my current position and learn more in a completely different area. He told me about other people he recognized that jumped up levels in leadership by moving out of their current roles. However, at least for my leader, he was always drawn to engineering. Also in this conversation, he mentioned that it sounded like I should be running my own company. Interestingly enough, he asked about this when I applied for my current role too. Creating my own business has been on my mind lately, but it was interesting to have him mention it to me.
Later on, I went to discuss this with my mentor up until this point. Not only did she have direct experience with the hiring managers of the new position, but I recognize that she often says things that relate in specific ways which guide my brain to figure out some important thoughts. This time was no different. In general, she gave good advice in favor of taking this role. It is an opportunity right now, which I do agree with. I also work really well with these people. They are similar to me and I feel like they could make great leaders that could help me learn and grow in ways not specifically work-related. However, as we talked, I mentioned my discussion with my leader and hearing how he created an opportunity for himself. This led to my mentor explaining to me how one of her leaders of this global team did the same thing. He was an external consultant that reached out and was able to get our company to hire him to perform a role he crafted.
This was a huge catalyst to guide my thinking. While applying for my MBA, I made up a fifteen-year plan that involved me creating my own management consulting firm. I recognize that one of the gaps I have to create this company is my ability to solicit others to use my services. I am not great at talking myself up for those situations. However, if I was able to find something within the company that I could convince my upper management to allow me to focus on in a new role developed for me, that would be an amazing learning experience. It would put a lot of pressure on me and I would need to push myself incredibly hard to pull that off, but the satisfaction would outweigh any other scenario. If I went down this path, I decided that my first steps would be to gain knowledge from outside of engineering and find gaps that would need to be filled with a position.
Most of this line of thinking felt right even before I had my actual interview. Right before my interview, I actually sat down with the person that would potentially be my direct report if things work out in my current role. Working with him was such an awesome experience. He is so motivated to improve things and I think he is the perfect fit for my style of leading. I do not think that is coincidental. It helped me go into my interview energized.
I half hoped that by explaining all of my goals to the hiring managers they would determine I was not a good fit for the role and make the decision for me. However, I knew that the universe was forcing me to make the decision for myself. I partially believe that there is no right decision and both of them would be equally fine for me. However, going through the interview I did have a few things to consider. Some of the pros – I would learn more about the global business in a way that would be impossible from where I am at. I would be a part of a team that is working towards a common goal, a fact which is lacking in my current role. I’d be on a team of people that I highly respect and think are the best professional people I have come to know. Some of the cons – I would be supporting IT service tickets. I would have some flexibility to grow, but the primary expectation would be to do the tickets. I probably would eventually lose a desk at work causing me to work from home and then I would probably never see anyone ever again (dramatic). I also realized that even though I do not know the full global business, I know a bigger chunk of it than most people. I know more than what is just happening at my own facility. However, I am partial to the specific product branch of my organization. This role would help me expand on that. Ultimately, I wonder how much I need to know about the whole picture. Part of being a jack of all trades is knowing when I have a good enough understanding to drop this and focus on something else more interesting.
Something I forgot to mention is salary. At least with this situation, the pay is going to be pretty much the same either way. It will be a small bump, but not much.
I have continued to say that if I do not take this global position, I will not want to stay in engineering for much longer. I think this is because of a fear of being stuck. I have strong loyalties, but I do feel the need to open the possibilities. I do not know if I will always live in Florida. I do not know if I will always be with Mettler Toledo. However, I think leaving engineering opens the possibilities up for me. It’s a decision that I am not great at making and I feel like I need to. I also see other leaders grow exponentially when they jump into different roles and departments.
After chatting with my mentor about my interview, she questioned my desire to leave engineering. That led me to think, ‘why am I making a big deal about this right now?’. I think to some extent it is me still comparing to others, and I should not do that. After the interview, my gut still does not think this global role is right. However, I did mention to one of my leaders that applying for this role was absolutely the right move. He fully agreed. Maybe it was just necessary for me to align my thoughts on what I want for my future. Maybe there are still discussions to be had to help me think through this.
After spewing all of this information and more to my wife over dinner, she told me that she felt like the global role was not right for a few reasons. In her gut, she didn’t think it was the right move. Also, she noticed that I got excited when I went through the ideas of creating a position for myself, but when I talked about the interview I did not sound too enthusiastic.
I requested a week to make a decision. The hiring managers said that this was a unique situation where it was just a matter of me making a decision. If I decide it is right, then we will discuss all of the HR stuff. If not, then I stay where I am at and hope that what my leaders are doing in the background go through.
I am grateful to the universe for even having the opportunity to make a decision like this. I know that it is important for me to make this decision for all of the future decisions I will one day have to make. Sometimes I just wish I was good at surrendering and just letting go…
