Trade-Off/Laid Off

In my most recent post, I wrote about loving your work and managing your work/life balance. This, of course, was followed the very next day by my department being cut in half due to a larger corporate restructuring, resulting in me being laid off. I thought I’d take this opportunity to revisit my comment from the last post about everything being a trade-off and delve into it a little further.

In general, we look for our careers to be rewarding, in one form or another. Some folks choose professions that are financially rewarding, but require significant sacrifice (be it travel, time in the office away from family, etc.). Other people make a conscious decision to work in a job that’s less demanding of their time and energy, but affords them ample time to be with their family, albeit at the expense of greater payment. Of course, there are also those that work tirelessly in positions that offer little in the way of monetary compensation either because that’s the only option available to them or, in more altruistic cases, because they find the job to be spiritually or emotionally rewarding. I think you get the idea.

This (hopefully) brief break from the working world seems like an opportune time to reassess where I’ve been and perhaps gain further clarity about where to head from here. Looking back at my career thus far, I’ve fallen in a few different categories. I began by hustling my tail off in internships and entry-level positions in sports marketing for very little pay in order to establish myself. I then reached a Manager level in a job I enjoyed greatly, accompanied by a certain financial comfort level (as much as one can have in NYC), but still with a serious time commitment.

In the fall of 2005, my wife and I moved back to my native New England, settling in Waltham, MA as she pursued her Ph.D. at Brandeis University. Unable to find a position in sports marketing upon moving, I began consulting for a number of local small businesses, helping with their marketing and advertising efforts. While this was enjoyable and rewarding, the hours and compensation were wildly inconsistent, leading to me accepting an offer of a position that would provide me with further stability at a time when it was sorely needed.

My most recent job was outside my chosen field and I must admit that I didn’t find the content particularly interesting. That being said, I accepted the position during a significant economic decline and the job afforded me certain luxuries I hadn’t experienced in prior jobs. Specifically, my office (until a recent move) was a mile from my house, enabling me to come home for lunch with my wife and older son during the first 18 months of his life. The hours weren’t as long as I had grown accustomed to in other workplaces and I was therefore able to focus on my family during a three year period in which we bought a house and had two children.

Team Cutler:

I wouldn’t trade the time that I had with family during that period for anything, despite some of frustrations I’ve had regarding a stunted professional development. Had I not been home for so many lunches with my son during his transition from infancy to toddlerhood, I would have missed opportunities to witness scenes like the one captured in the following video, where my son discovers the wonder of eating fresh mango.

What I seek now is a happy medium in regards to my work/life balance. By focusing more on my career in order to work in an environment which I find to be more rewarding I realize that I’ll be sacrificing some of the additional time that I’ve had of late with my family. They will always remain a priority though and I’m confident that I can be a better husband and father when feeling more content with my professional growth.

As always, any thoughts or feedback provoked by this post are welcome, in addition to job leads or suggestions for my next move.

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