"Golden handcuffs", or just a good, stable job?

Post date: 2021-01-13 02:03:43

I've been at my well-paying, comfortable, but unfulfilling corporate job for about 2.5 years now. An opportunity to switch to something more in line with my personal values and goals has come up. I've never thought of myself as someone who strongly values money/prestige, but I'm having a lot more feelings than I expected about losing some of the material benefits my current job affords me. How do I work through this to decide if I should stay or go?

A couple years ago, in my mid-twenties, I washed out from academia onto the shores of Big Tech. At the time, I jumped at the opportunity to:

1. Pay off my student loans and save up some money
2. Get some big-name work experience on my sparse CV
3. Have someone else finance my relocation to a new place because sure, why not?

I feel extremely fortunate that all of that has come to pass, but throughout that time I have steadily become less and less happy with the job itself. Various management changes and restructuring has put me far from the aspects of the work I was initially drawn to, working with a group I don't really fit in with. I don't feel overworked or like I'm in a toxic environment, exactly; I just feel that I'm stagnating, intellectually, and it's making me feel incurious and exhausted outside of work too (though this could be the covid situation, too). I never wanted to be someone who just clocks into a bullshit job every morning for the paycheck, if I had other options.

Recently an opportunity at a nonprofit research institution came up that felt much more in line with my interests and aptitudes. Initially I felt very excited about this - it was exactly the sort of thing I thought I wanted to end up doing after achieving my 3 goals above, when I first started at my current job. But I hadn't anticipated how nervous I would be about taking a significant pay cut (I won't be going broke, but the nonprofit world ain't paying FAANG money) and also the loss of that "big-name" prestige (apparently I have a more fragile ego than I thought).

Will there ever be a time when I know that I must leave my cushy job, or am I always going to feel this way? Am I just going to have to take the leap one day, and is now (with *gestures at everything*) the time to do so? All advice appreciated - thanks in advance.

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