Passion Over Profits

I’m a little over 4 months into the new job and I think now it’s safe to talk about a topic that’s been fermenting in my head without risk of jinxing anything at this point.

This last time around finding a new job was the first time in the 15 years of my career where multiple offers have actually lined up in spacetime such that I had to decide between them. I’m sure I could have made this happen before if that was the goal but I’ve always tried to be selective with the companies I apply to. As everyone has already told you I’m sure, this is a great position to be in when negotiating your offer.

After a few back and forths with each company I felt pretty good about what each was offering, but on paper one was pretty stacked

And to top it all off, Offer 2 had company offsite coming up I’d be invited to in the Bahamas!

Just looking at them side by side, Offer 2 won on pretty much every aspect you can think of.

But I still ended up turning it down.

There was one thing I was missing from Offer 2 and had in abundance for Offer 1: Passion. As you might know from my other post, Offer 1 was Commonwealth Fusion Systems where I get to work with insanely talented and smart people pushing the frontier of science to try and accomplish something humanity has never done before. I’m so much more passionate about working on futuristic tech solutions to climate change than the normal sort of business that Offer 2 would have me work on. After a certain point, mo’ money don’t mean mo’ happiness. So to think of it another way, by turning down the extra money I effectively bought happiness with money that wouldn’t have made me happier.

A long time ago I read some career advice (probably from some random reddit post) that boiled down to the fact that job satisfaction comes down to:

• The Pay
• The Work
• The People

If you only like 1 (or even worse, 0!) of the 3 you should be spending all your free time looking for a new job or advancing your skills so you can get a better job. If you have 2 you should be casually looking for new opportunities, and if you have all 3, hold on tight! It’s obvious enough, but if the pay sucks the rest of your life suffers. If you can’t stand the people you work with you’re gonna end up miserable, and if you find the work tedious and boring you’re going to spend a huge chunk of your life checked out and bored. Each one of these is a spectrum of course, and being passionate about your job is just the strongest version of liking the work you do.

I feel incredibly grateful that I not only had the chance to pick between two great outcomes, but also that I was able to land a dream job I’m passionate for. I hope some day you’ll get the chance to pick too, and choose your passion!