Sighs of relief, the intense career thinking is over (and consequently also my silence here).
I’ve signed the contract. They don’t know it yet, but I have.

It was either a long-term wise decision, or just plain foolish… and I won’t really know which it was until several years from now.

I accepted a job with the Technology department of the company I’m currently with. I’m going in as a lateral hire, but will nevertheless join their graduate training programme, together with new graduates. That’s eight weeks of full-time training this summer and frequent continuing training throughout the first year.

And I’ve turned down a perfectly good job from another firm, which also offered lots of training, and exciting products, and the people seemed nice as well. Plus the pay would have been about 50% higher.

The other job was one I would immediately be quite good at, because to a large extent it uses technologies I already know, and advancement from there. The one I chose doesn’t expect me to be particularly productive at all during the first year or so, but spend the time learning instead – and it will certainly be needed, because all the technologies used here will be new to me (Java above all).

In the end, I think both jobs would have turned out well and be broadly comparable. Apart from the fact that one offered 50% more money, but the other is with a firm that I know and trust, with people I know and like.

So I guess this is how much I value my relationship with the firm.