November 9, 2026

Told Marcus this morning I'm not taking the infrastructure migration role. Put it in writing early so I'd stop relitigating it in my head after the fact.

The pitch was a 10–12% base increase and a formal step up in seniority. On paper that looks straightforward. What it actually meant: an 18-month program with a hard regulatory deadline, a steering committee that resets its mandate every six weeks depending on who last talked to the CIO, and dotted-line accountability into three VP orgs that don't agree on scope. I've been inside programs shaped like that. The PM absorbs the variance for things the PM doesn't control. The salary bump is real. The timeline risk is also real.

That part is fact. What might be hypothesis: that nothing equivalent comes around in the next 12 months. I'd put that at maybe 60–40 that something comparable surfaces by mid-2027. But I've estimated that before at other decision points and been wrong in both directions, so I'm holding that number loosely.

What I notice I'm actually feeling: relief, which is probably telling me something. I've been saying since the summer that I want to protect evenings for the AWS Solutions Architect prep I've been stalling on since August. This program would have ended that for at least eight months. Whether protecting that time is discipline or avoidance with a tidy story around it — not entirely sure. Probably both, in proportions I can't measure yet.

The trade I'm making is explicit: I'm giving up the salary lift and the visibility in exchange for time I claim I'll use on the certification. If I don't have a study log to show by February, then I just chose avoidance over growth with better vocabulary.

Next step: Sunday, two hours, first practice exam. Establish a baseline. Target date for the cert is February 28. Revisit the career question at Q1 review in March.

#career #decisionlog #projectmanagement #everydaymoney