What framework should I use to make major career moves?

What company are you part of? There is tremendous value in landing a big win early in your career: a well-known startup, a top educational institution, rapid promotion, etc. This may sound crass, but given your itch to do something different, I would focus solely on this -- associate yourself with success.

You should do a very frank assessment of your company you're part of, and the companies you're likely to get offers at.

If you're open to sharing, please let us know where you work and what you think about the future prospects, both for you and the company.

I just want to make sure I have everything right here (please correct me if I'm wrong about anything here):

• You are in Mumbai. Your parents want you to settle down in Mumbai, but you want to explore the world and live in another city/country, at least for a little bit
• You are debating between going into engineering management (I assume at a bigger company) or going to a startup (I assume an earlier one)
• You are trying to figure out how switching jobs and relocating would interplay with each other
• Things aren't going well in your current company. With the 3 month notice period, does this mean you need to let your manager know 3 months ahead of time if you are going to leave?

Balancing family and career is tough. If you have a close relationship with your parents, it could really damage the relationship if you move super far away. If you really want to live in another region and experience different cultures, I would have an honest conversation with your parents about that. Personally, I live pretty close to my parents and I'm close to my in-laws as well: We are all in the Bay Area. I am pretty happy that my wife and I can do that. I also know that in India, the culture is very traditional and there's a lot of pressure to settle down, have a family, own a house, etc (this is a common theme among Asian cultures overall).

Ultimately, this is a tough call and I don't have an answer. It really depends on how you value different pillars of your life. With the location thing - There are levels to it. A smaller change is to move within India and then visit your parents regularly. A huge change is moving to Europe or North America.

What I will say is that your ability to take risks generally goes down over time. When you reach your 30s, more decisions get harder and harder. If you really want to live somewhere else, I recommend doing it sooner rather than later.

The course I will make after my 2nd side project course is a huge master course about career direction (choosing companies, teams, specialization, etc). It's definitely one of the most common topics in Taro.

Here's a bunch of other resources about topics you brought up:

• For connecting with startups: "How to find and connect with scrappy startups?"
• For choosing location as a software engineer: "How important is location for software engineers?"
• For the engineer -> engineering manager transition: [Taro Top 10] Software Engineer To Engineering Manager (IC -> M Track)