#tradeoffs

The vendor selection project came up again today. Paulina asked me directly if I wanted to lead it — a six-month engagement picking a replacement for our current portfolio tool, involving four vendors, procurement, and probably three stakeholder workshops. She said it'd be "great visibility." I said I'd get back to her by Monday.

Here's what I actually know: it's probably 8 to 10 extra hours a week for at least four months, the executive who owns the budget is hard to read, and I've done this kind of selection before — the last one in 2022 added nothing I could point to on my comp review. What I don't know: whether this one lands differently because the new CTO is paying attention, or whether that's wishful thinking on my part.

The trade-off is concrete enough. If I take it, I'm giving up the four hours a week I've been putting into a systems thinking course I started in August. I'm halfway through and actually finding it useful for how I run retrospectives. If I drop it now I'll probably not restart it. That's real.

The internal transfer posting closed Friday. Deadline to express interest was end of day and I let it pass. The role was a senior program manager slot in the platform infrastructure group — same band, different org, more visibility, more risk. I sat with it for about two weeks and kept coming back to the same problem: the hiring manager is new, the team is mid-reorg, and the mandate is still being written. Those three things together is a combination I've been burned by before.

What I'm giving up is about a 15–20% bump in profile, maybe an easier path to a director conversation in 18 months if the team stabilizes. What I'm keeping is a team I trust, a stakeholder map I understand, and a backlog that's roughly in control. The opportunity cost is real. I'm not pretending otherwise.

The case for passing wasn't confidence — it was risk tolerance given current cash flow. We're sitting on about four months of household expenses liquid right now. The mortgage renewal is in February. Taking a lateral into a chaotic org when the runway isn't longer felt like stacking bets. I notice I feel slightly relieved, which might mean it was the right call or might mean I'm rationalizing comfort. Hard to separate those cleanly at 10pm.