Last week I got a job offer.
Ever since we started Arquetipos I’ve focused a significant portion of my time on looking for projects, and one appeared last week. A local nearshoring operation wanted to hire a project manager for one of their main clients. The group would start at 15 people and grow from there into an estimated 45, making it the largest group I have lead - a very exciting opportunity. The local company liked me, the client liked me, and I liked them.
The only kink? It required occasional traveling to the United States.
I’ve said enough about the US-VISIT program and its immigration fingerprinting requirements, and how these little invasions of privacy help get people used to the bigger ones. While I’ve stopped myself from traveling there ever since they began the program - they’re free to put whatever immigration controls they want, and I’m free not to visit - this is the first time it clashed with something I actually wanted. I felt this opportunity calling me, even though it was more like a regular job than a project. I wanted to see what I could learn by working with such a large group of people. The end client was an appealing company with interesting projects and customers all over the globe.
But I turned it down.
After all I’ve said about not compromising, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it all out the window just because there was a very appealing carrot dangling in front of my eyes. I would have felt like a hypocrite, like I was just chuckling and saying Oh, that stuff about not going there? Hell, that was before there was money involved!.
And I’ve got to confess, I felt really bad about it for a few days after. Until right about last night. It was then that I realized why I felt so glum about turning it down: this opportunity had a lot of things that appealed to me. If I want to recover that feeling, I just have to look for those qualities in another venture, while removing the dealbreaker that traveling to the U.S. was.
It dawned on me that it’s not that different to what happens in relationships. Sometimes you are seeing someone who has a lot of appealing qualities, but there are important things that are just wrong. In those cases, it’s best to learn from the experience and move on, looking for someone with those things you love but without those you hate. I kept looking, and I lucked out in finding Vero, with whom I’m madly in love and after more than two years together, the relationship feels just as fresh as when we started.
On enterprises, I just need to pass on the ones that are merely attractive, and move on to the ones with which I can fall in love.