You have the right idea at the right time.5 outstanding companies have offered the same job, how do you decide

Question

1) Home town.- A nice office, moderate salary, but you get to stay close to home, with exensive family benefits.
2) High rise office in NY or LA far from home. High salary but cost of living comes out lower than option 1.
3) Mid sized office in what you consider a boring city. High salary with a medium cost of living. You take home the most money here.
4) Small office in Silicon Valley or eqaul. Access to all of top comapnies in your in your industry. High salary but super high cost of living.
5) Overseas office in the city of your choice, London Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo? Far from your family, but nice but small modern decorated servied apartment in a high rise tower, Super high standard of living, You are only paying the bills but have latest in high living provided in a package
*You have an iron clad contract with a five year commitment to each option. Consider all the factors before choosin one answer. The basic factors are family, finance, prestige, adventure, security

Sorry about not being clear enough in my question, but this space is limited and I am pretty new here.

Consider this a hypothetical question or offer to you. The offers are based on the information you have and time is of the essence, so there is no time for negotiating.

All of the offers would be in the $100,000.00 per year range. The pay is good but not enough to retire on after 5 years unless you do an outstanding job of putting together your idea in those 5 years.

All options are far away from your family except number 1, but some are noted as meaning much farther away. Consider the salary to be $100,000.00 per year or it's equal. As far as a boring city just interpret that as what you would consider the most boring city or least attractive.

Excellent answer by the way

Answer 1

Absolutely, positively, and without doubt: Option 5. I recently did it, to Singapore in fact. While Singapore isn't quite the same kind of level of world-class city that are represented in your list, it's still an amazing thing to be able to experience living and working in a city outside the United States, and your Option 5 is the only one that introduces the foreign element, so I suppose I'm putting a premium on your "adventure" element. In your scenario, all of the options will provide an extremely comfortable standard of living, so I don't see that there are drastic differences in that regard. Family could be a consideration, but from the description, this move isn't intended to be permanent, and it's always possible to go and visit them. Those 18-hour marathon flights that Singapore Air run to L.A. and Newark are long, but it's funny how fast you get used to them. And family might potentially come to visit you as well. If somebody presented your list of cities in Option 5, I would be really, really torn between Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong, but that is the order of my preference. But regardless, the exposure to new and different perspectives, plus the exposure to new and different places that are harder to get to from the US makes Option 5 the most attractive option. Singapore is a prime example of proximity to a lot of amazing stuff... Bangkok is about 2 hours away, Hanoi is 3, Hong Kong 3 and a half, Tokyo just over 6, but at least it's not through 11 or 12 time zones to boot! Plus, being located in a foreign place makes it possible to take advantage of a lot of cultural possibilities that might be a little harder to achieve in, say, the "Home Town" scenario of your Option 1. For example, one thing that Singapore has is a great diversity of cultures (Chinese, Indian, Malay) all in a relatively small place. For me to do something like take up the sitar turns out to be extremely easy to do with a fantastic Indian classical music shop and school over in Little India. Picking up some Mandarin Chinese is also something that can be pretty easily done. And the cuisine is pretty interesting as well! All these are pull factors that make the overseas choice really attractive.

For me, it did mean selling off basically everything I had (albeit there were a couple things I couldn't part with, like my beautiful Taylor 813ce in Brazilian rosewood), including the house, car, most of the music equipment, and putting Malcolm the Cat in jail for 30 days because of the damn quarantine requirements, but even after going over all the reasons NOT to do it, I still had to give it a try, since the opportunity might not come along again.

Your REAL friends and the family who loves you will understand. Yea, they might be sad to see you go and will miss you (and vice versa), but it's easy to keep in touch. Whenever I travel, I keep a daily journal and take lots of photos. Then when I get back, I'll create a PDF with text and pictures integrated so they can see and hear about what it's like in these interesting places where I get the opportunity to see. Plus, we've got e-mail available, as well as VoIP options that makes talking with them very affordable (as long as you can manage the time difference headaches!).

For most of us, work takes up the vast majority of our waking hours. Many of us enjoy what we do, but there can and should be more to the nature of what we experience in life because, unless you're Hindu or certain kinds of Buddhists or just a secular person who believes in reincarnation, this life is IT, so when an opportunity to do something like experience living abroad comes up, I'd say that you go for it!

By the way, I take it that you're a musician as well. You can ping me on [e-mail] if you want to chat about that topic sometime.

Thanks!

Answer 2

well through process of elimination?

#2 and #5 are no good cause I would miss my family.

Some quesitons you might ask yourself:
How important really is all that money?
The town might be boring but is it close to any that arent? Is the job boring?
How much personal space would you need?
What are your options for growth within each company?
Which company is the most reputable in your eyes?

I would pick 3 because the money situation is good. It would allow me to save up some money for rough times or retirement or whatever really. You say the city is boring, but are you looking in the right places? Im sure any city can be fun somehow.

Answer 3

5

Family used to be important to me. In fact, I quit a great job to care for three elderly family members. They're gone, now; and I'm finding that blood is not thicker than water. So, family is no longer an issue.

Financial rewards are necessary if you want material things. Been there ... done that. Simpler is better.

Prestige -- I opt for internal validation and intrinsic rewards.

Adventure -- Now that I'm free to "move about the country", I can't quite decide where to go! Kinda' like a kid in a candy store.

Security -- What's that? Control is an illusion.

Answer 4

I'm between 4 and 5 because with experience you can go back home and make the better money after taking 4 or 5 especially 5 and building a name for yourself. Good Luck:-)