Howdy folks, Drob here. Remember me? Will you all excuse a non-seasonal post from the quieter half of this blog?

Two things have happened this week which have caused me to spend a lot of this pre-holiday weekend thinking about my job. First, I just got a big end-of-year bonus. Second, I just saw a listing for a job I think I might like. And I’m full of doubt about whether I should apply for this job.

I’ve been working for my current company for 7 years. I’m a programmer and computer systems guy, and then got promoted to manage my group, which now consists of me and six others. So, I write code, set up computer systems, and manage other people who do the same thing.

I really like my job. I like programming, but I’ve gotten to the point in my career where there are certain computer tasks that I’ve just done enough times that they hold no interest for me anymore; being able to now delegate those tasks and focus on the ones that ARE new and interesting to me really helps me maintain excitement about my job. I think I’m a pretty good boss. I’m pretty good at communicating technical concepts to non-technical people, and business concepts to technical people, which I think is a real asset in my position.

I also like my company. The company is big enough that there’s a fair amount of novelty in the situations we find ourselves in– there’s always something going on, a new challenge to deal with. But it’s small enough that I know nearly everyone who works for my company– certainly I know everyone who works at corporate headquarters by name, and I know many of the people at other locations also. I like my boss, and most of the other partners in the company. And did I mention they just gave me a bonus?

But even though I like my job, after seven years, I’m starting to think about whether this place is all I want out of my career. A few thoughts about this:

• This is the only “real job” I’ve ever had; I worked various temporary and part-time jobs in high school and college; after graduation I ran a business for a while, then took this job.
• I’m well paid in my current job, and I get decent raises on a fairly regular basis. However, I suspect that I could be making substantially more money if I went and did the same thing in a different kind of company.
• I hate commuting. Honestly, this is only barely a negative on my current job– although I don’t like my current commute, there are many other jobs where the commute would be much worse. And, although I don’t like the travel time, my job is in a vibrant city neighborhood. I would be less happy with a shorter commute that terminated in some anonymous suburban office park.
• The prime jobs in my industry are not in Philadelphia, they’re in other cities. But, we are staying put in Philly for the foreseeable future– we love the neighborhood we live in, and the school our kids go to, and being close to our families.

So all of those factors are in the mix in my thinking about my job. But in addition to those factors, there’s an elephant in the room. Actually, there are two elephants, a small one, and a large one.

Here’s the small elephant: My company’s business is selling DVDs. We sell them wholesale, we sell them on the internet, we sell them in stores. Boy howdy, do we sell DVDs.

I’m passionate about computers, and the internet, and the power of these technologies to make people’s lives better. But I’m not passionate about the retail industry, or about selling DVDs. I’m not even passionate about film. So I’m just selling widgets. And I feel like my life would be more fulfilling if my job ultimately served some goal I felt passionate about.

I do feel passionate about feeding my family, and sending my kids to a great community-based independent school, and my job does serve those goals. But still.

Okay, I’ve been edging around it long enough, here’s the larger elephant: what’s on a lot of those DVDs we sell is porn. Not all of them; maybe half, give or take. In some ways, this is the same issue as the smaller elephant. In addition to lacking passion and excitement about porn, I’m somewhat embarrassed and ashamed of this aspect of my job. I can’t talk about many of the products we sell in polite company. Every time I tell someone where I work, I wonder whether they think of the company as a porn source, and whether they judge me for it. And if I ever do decide to move on, will this aspect of my work make it harder for me to get other jobs?

Beyond that, as a parent, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that my job is not kid-safe. I have great memories of going to work with both of my parents between the ages of 7 and 16. Those experiences were great for me as a kid, and helped me form a comfort level with what different kinds of workplaces were like and what kind of work I might like to do when I grow up. It disappoints me that I won’t be able to do that with my kids. C is 7 now, about the age when I started to be interested in my parents’ jobs. This seems like a small concern in the scheme of things, but it bugs me.

So all of these things have been rolling around in my head. I’m not itching for a change, and it would be really easy to live with the status quo. I’m not sure the perfect job for me exists– I think that most jobs which would be more fulfilling would be unacceptable in other ways. It’s hard to know what I should settle for.

But anyway, there’s this one job. I don’t actually know too much about the job, but it looks interesting. I don’t know how much it pays. I don’t know the company, but at least it looks like they are doing work that definitely intersects with some things I really do feel passionate about. The commute would be about the same as my current commute. I suspect that my qualifications are not quite ideal for this job and my salary requirement would be too high, but I don’t know that for sure… I should really send in my resume and see if I can get an interview. I’d need to update my resume, and write a decent cover letter– but doing that would take about the same amount of time that I’ve just spent writing this blog post. So why am I so reluctant to do it?