So I’m at a career crossroad, again.

I have to choose between two (main) job prospects.

1. The first choice seems to be a laid back, small company in a smaller city
   with a better commute. Here’s the breakdown:  
   • The pay’s the same as the last place I was at, but not as good as my all-time high (which will understandably take a while to reach, again). It’s enough money, but I’d like to actually start getting ahead a bit and stop being so irresponsible w/ my spending. It’s been fun being a man-child for so many years, but I want to start getting things in order.
   • The work is more technical, and I’d be working with some
     very contemporary technologies (Ruby on Rails, CentOS for servers, my choice of
     Mac/Linux workstations.
   • The work this company does is meaningful in the sense that it’s contributing to humanity and helping the scientific community.
   • As a small,
     privately-owned company that’s been around a short while, there’s a little bit of
     comfort that they’ve got some stability, but there’s still some risk involved. Having chased my passions in the past, I’ve decided that the risk/reward ratio is just not as important to me as it used to be.
   • I like the city this company’s in. It’s very down to earth, pretty laid back and I’m very familiar with it.
   • I’d have to drive to work — there public transportation in this city’s kinda lame. Parking is free, at least. The cost of a week of commuting is about $32, based on current fuel prices.
   • This company’s about 1/2 the size of the last one I worked at, which is to say that it’s very small. At the age of 23, I led a bigger division of men on the first ship I was on. Being able to know everyone at a company is a nice work environment.
   • As an added bonus, it’s very convenient to pick up a certain special someone ;)
2. The second job is in the much bigger city to my south. Let’s see how it compares:
   • I’d be working for a contractor at a huge govt agency.
   • The position is in charge of the messaging and collaboration teams.
   • The pay is really decent.
   • The teams are very highly competent.
   • The technology they use is something I’m very good at and happen to really like, but it’s not very modern.
   • The commute would suck balls, but I’d take the public transportation. $71/week to use public transportation, or $147 ($57 in fuel, and $90 in parking) to drive. Wow, really? Is it that much more to commute? That works out to nearly $4k annually! Yikes. Anyway.
   • I’d be getting my foot in the door for some future govt positions, which means higher job security.
   • I’d never get to know everyone at the govt job, which is kind of a bummer.
   • Way more conservative environment.
   • Beauracracy.
   • Office politics.
   • Union.
   • Performance evaluation writing.
   • Counseling.
   • Blackberry. In addition to having my iPhone. Bleh.

So, that’s the breakdown.

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