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.