A slight digression — I have had many regrets in my career, and here is but one of them. I was working at Google at the time. Work was — well, not good per se — but going. Then one day, a recruiter from some kind of agency called me out of the blue. He told me that a medical startup in San Jose was looking for a software engineer to lead a team to test their medical hardware. Now, this would have been a nice upgrade to my job title, because I was just an ordinary software engineer at Google, the lowest of the low. But the pay at Google was going to be difficult to walk away from. Nevertheless I was interested to see what happens so I told the recruiter, sure, I will give it a shot.
First, they sent me a programming assignment, which was to implement an elevator scheduling system. This was a non-trivial task and I was certain I would not be able to finish it within the time limit. Unless, of course, I go on the Internet and look for a solution. Then I remembered how much I hate cheating, so I didn’t do that. Instead, I did what I could: I wrote a very bare-bones elevator simulator where you could run it and see the output, while leaving the complex scheduling stuff as an exercise to be done later. I e-mailed over my solution to their hiring manager. Not long afterwards, I got a call… asking me to come on-site for a round of interviews.
It turns out they liked that I took this particular approach to “solving” their problem, precisely because it was different from what other people did, it was out of the box. So I took a day off to go interview at their office. It was a cheaply rented space within walking distance of my apartment. (Disclaimer: “walking distance” meant “within 30 minutes” since I did not have a car at the time — terrible idea, by the way.) I met with some of their execs and senior members, worked through a few technical interviews. They were making an automated insulin pump. Talking to these folks, I was starting to become sold. They were capable people. They had funding. They could possibly disrupt the industry. After a long day of interviews, I went home to think it over.
The next day the recruiter called me to say they were going to extend an offer. It was a decent offer, but it was not good enough to make me leave Google. So I asked for more — and they actually offered me even more. And this time, I had to think about it more seriously. Should I leave Google to go to this startup? If I were to compare based on pay alone, it would have been a quick and definite no. But I also had to think about, what if this startup becomes big? Then, my stock options would be worth something. The chances of that happening are always going to be slim… but somehow, the chances for this company seemed better than most. And this would have been my first startup job, in a totally new space. And I would be able to say on my resume that I was a lead rather than a grunt, which meant accelerating my career growth. The recruiter had echoed the very same things, too. All in all, these intangibles would be worth more than any amount Google could offer me (okay, that’s an exaggeration — there are in fact concrete monetary values for those things). What was I to do? I had no one to turn to, so for a few days I did my own research, reading about other people’s stories and such…
But ultimately, I decided to turn it down.
At the time, I felt it was more about staying at Google rather than turning down the job. That’s what I told the recruiter, at least. As I suspected he would do, he chewed me out over the phone. He told me turning down the job would be a very bad decision for my career. It would put my career at a standstill. It would outright kill my career. He was going to lose a good bit of commission, so that’s understandable. But I could not say anything back to him… because he was right. He was saying exactly what I felt. It all made sense to me.
Then why did I turn down the job? Because I was seeking the comfort of the familiar. The stable job, the pay, the work that I knew, which was boring but not too stressful. Compared to that, taking the job at the startup would mean throwing myself into the wilderness (something I would have done myself anyway, when I decided to quit Google). It was easy, too easy, to justify that decision to myself afterwards — a few free meals and snacks at the Google campus did the trick.
Now, years later, I still think, what could have been. I haven’t had the heart to check on how this company is doing today — and I never will. But perhaps one day I will make peace with myself.