September 24, 2026

There's a role posted internally — senior PM on the infrastructure modernization program. Posted Tuesday, closes next Friday. My manager mentioned it before I saw the listing, which means someone nudged her to nudge me. Worth noting.

The move would be lateral in title, maybe a 4–6% bump depending on how band negotiation goes, and would add two direct reports for the first time. The program is 18 months from a hard cutover deadline with three vendor contracts already signed. Not a greenfield situation.

Here's what I'm actually weighing:

• Stay: known work, known team, slower but predictable. My current project wraps in Q1 and I'd likely get slotted onto something less interesting afterward.
• Move: real scope expansion, people management experience I don't have, but I'd be inheriting someone else's commitments on a schedule that already looks thin.

The people management piece is the honest unknown. I've led cross-functional groups but never had direct reports. I don't know if I'm good at it. I don't know if I'd like it. There's a reasonable chance I'd be mediocre at it for 6–12 months while the program is under pressure, which is a bad combination for everyone involved.

What I'm not doing is treating this as "my next step" in some abstract career arc. The question is narrower: do I learn more, or lose more, in that role over the next 18 months? Current best guess is 55–45 toward taking it, but I don't have enough signal on the manager I'd be reporting to. She joined the org in June.

Next step: coffee with the hiring manager Monday morning. One real question — how much of the current timeline is negotiable versus baked into the vendor SLAs. Her answer will shift my estimate more than anything else I could research this weekend.

#career #decisionlog #projectmanagement #internalrole