Pros and Cons of applying for Job
Apr. 20th, 2004 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaPros:
1. It would challenge me. Would take advantage of my innate intellectual and organizational abilities, and develop my managerial abilities.
2. Would pay me lots more money.
3. Would allow me to step back into a real professional position, not just a job to pay the bills. Has a career track future, without the need for further schooling (though that would still be an option).
4. Would give me a lot of power to shape where the whole (newly consituted) department is going. I have definite opinions on the subject matter, and would get to express them and shape discourse, maybe even at a national level if I got into it.
Cons:
1. Would require me to report directly to someone I don't know personally, but who has a reputation for being kind of difficult to work with. In public meetings, he comes across as vague, pompous, and condescending. That's not good.
2. mr. flea was, in fact, right - I am not that interested in the technology per se. I am interested in technology - and the technological aspects of this position - as a tool, a means to an end. This opinion might in fact prevent me from getting the job if I chose to apply - because the potential biss seems to love technology for its own sake, whether or not it actually achieves anything.
3. I have a fairly slim chance of actually getting the job, since I distinctly lack one of the specific qualifications the job requires (a trainable one, but still). Also, my sources tell me that the putative boss is looking to hire someone who has done this before at another institution, and that's not me. Even if hired, I am sure they'd use my inexperience to pay me a lot less than the "estimated hiring range" on the job description.
4. Would seriously reduce my playing at work time.
5. And here's the big one, folks - would require me to decide I want to be ambitious again, that I want to achieve something. Leaving my PhD program made me feel like a failure in some ways, but in other ways has been very relaxing, and has allowed me to separate my life and my work for the first time ever. I doubt I could continue to separate them as well if I were doing something demanding. My family life - already stretched to the limits - would suffer. And also, I have a serious lack of confidence stemming from my academic failure (which, in my opinion, was a result of my ambivalence about ambition and a failure of my will and personality, rather than a straight intellectual failure - I failed because of who I am, not because of how good my brain is - in some ways, I may have failed because my brain is too good, and I can always see all sides of a problem, so cannot take the firm stands academia necessitates. Yes, another successful academic career was dealt a fatal blow by the powers of postmodernism - that unholy trinity of relativism, deconstructionism, and multiculturalism. I stopped believing in anything, stopped believeing that anything could ultimately be known about my subject (archaeology), and that's a damn hard way to make an academic career.)
Right now I'm trending no on applying. But berating myself for being a coward and a lazy git.
1. It would challenge me. Would take advantage of my innate intellectual and organizational abilities, and develop my managerial abilities.
2. Would pay me lots more money.
3. Would allow me to step back into a real professional position, not just a job to pay the bills. Has a career track future, without the need for further schooling (though that would still be an option).
4. Would give me a lot of power to shape where the whole (newly consituted) department is going. I have definite opinions on the subject matter, and would get to express them and shape discourse, maybe even at a national level if I got into it.
Cons:
1. Would require me to report directly to someone I don't know personally, but who has a reputation for being kind of difficult to work with. In public meetings, he comes across as vague, pompous, and condescending. That's not good.
2. mr. flea was, in fact, right - I am not that interested in the technology per se. I am interested in technology - and the technological aspects of this position - as a tool, a means to an end. This opinion might in fact prevent me from getting the job if I chose to apply - because the potential biss seems to love technology for its own sake, whether or not it actually achieves anything.
3. I have a fairly slim chance of actually getting the job, since I distinctly lack one of the specific qualifications the job requires (a trainable one, but still). Also, my sources tell me that the putative boss is looking to hire someone who has done this before at another institution, and that's not me. Even if hired, I am sure they'd use my inexperience to pay me a lot less than the "estimated hiring range" on the job description.
4. Would seriously reduce my playing at work time.
5. And here's the big one, folks - would require me to decide I want to be ambitious again, that I want to achieve something. Leaving my PhD program made me feel like a failure in some ways, but in other ways has been very relaxing, and has allowed me to separate my life and my work for the first time ever. I doubt I could continue to separate them as well if I were doing something demanding. My family life - already stretched to the limits - would suffer. And also, I have a serious lack of confidence stemming from my academic failure (which, in my opinion, was a result of my ambivalence about ambition and a failure of my will and personality, rather than a straight intellectual failure - I failed because of who I am, not because of how good my brain is - in some ways, I may have failed because my brain is too good, and I can always see all sides of a problem, so cannot take the firm stands academia necessitates. Yes, another successful academic career was dealt a fatal blow by the powers of postmodernism - that unholy trinity of relativism, deconstructionism, and multiculturalism. I stopped believing in anything, stopped believeing that anything could ultimately be known about my subject (archaeology), and that's a damn hard way to make an academic career.)
Right now I'm trending no on applying. But berating myself for being a coward and a lazy git.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 12:15 pm (UTC)Choosing the life you want is not cowardly
Date: 2004-04-20 12:19 pm (UTC)I've reinvented myself several times in my life, and I'm currently working on another one. Even the ones which were mistakes were seldom unrecoverable.
Make your work support your life, not your life support your work. That's just my opinion.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 02:16 pm (UTC)Reading DX's comment, I thought, yes: it's a skill to apply and interview for a job, and you could practice it here and decline the job for all the con reasons above were you offered it. Also, it tells your employers that you're intersted in advancement, and that could be a good thing for them to keep in mind.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 06:52 am (UTC)But it's that latter bit I'm going to lovingly dope-slap you for, okay? You're ambivalent for some very good reasons about a job that's not quite the right match for you, but you're not cowardly, and you're not lazy. I do suspect, though, (having been through very much the same thing, and very much the same lack of confidence, feeling of personal failure attached thereunto, fears about getting involved/identified with work ever again, yadda yadda) that the whole academic "failure" thing is shorting out your very big brain.
You've got a good grip on the advantages and the disadvantages of this particular job. I don't know the people in that particular department, but if they're anything like the ones in that other somewhat related department upstairs (and how vague can I possibly get?), they will be very busy and involved and passionate about what they're doing and not so much having time for an outside life.
(Even so, as DX says, an app won't hurt you.)