How to get unstuck in choosing companies to work?

Question

I am trying to change my job to a midlevel-senior engineer position and not wait for promotion (which is hard to come by, in my case) and grow in my career, compensation and find a better environment with a better work life balance. My ethics play an important role in my life. In the past month, I have gotten 3 offers- 2 from start ups and 1 from a big tech acquired startup. I rejected all the three. The startups because i felt the chaotic and high stress environment might not be good for my mental health. And the big tech startup one which paid the best and had a great work life balance, with a great environment- everything i could ask for, but it was in the business of something i do not condone due to my value system. Hence i felt conflicted with many second thoughts, hence i rejected. Now, I have 2 upcoming interviews with big tech companies which are famous for having difficult work life balance. But i am determined, if i get any of them, I will accept. I am also open to midsized who will sponsor my visa, but those kinds are hard to convince for the visa. I have 5 months after which i will be financially and reputation-wise desperate to have a job. The problem is that i feel terrible for rejecting the offers. I feel i have taken a big risk. People tell me i should have accepted the best offer but all of them mostly came with a monetary commitment to join and work for at least a year due to high visa fees. So i could not just accept and take the next best opportunity. How do i work with this situation emotionally and strategically?
Context-
SDE1 at Amazon (on focus which i am failing purposely since i don't want to continue there)
Trying to change countries. Offers from the country i want to move to.

Jonathan C · Accepted Answer

Evaluate your options with the following ratio: (Money + Personal Value) / Time.

If there's 2 options that pay exactly the same: the one that requires less hours is better and the one that requires more hours is worse.
We will also include the time you spend trying to right the right opportunity.
- If you spend too much time finding a slightly better opportunity (like one in your target country, one with more money, or both), time will increase more than money or personal value (so this means your current position is net negative)

Not every option will be perfect (you will never get perfect options as a SDE1 unless you're one of the non-Phd new grads who got into Anthropic or OpenAI). As a result, you'd need to weight each option individually and understand what it gives you. Run your options (including the option to interview more to get more offers) through this equation, and see if there's one that stands out over the other.

If so: pick that option.
If not: evaluate what you value more.
- Do you value money in the short term more?
- Or do you value potential growth, immigrating to your target country, interesting products, and other non-money things more?
Add weights to the equation (like (Money + 2 *Personal Value) / Time if you value moving to your target country more) and run your options through the equation again.

Hope this helps!

How to get unstuck in choosing companies to work?

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