I have one of the best complicated decisions I've experience in my life and I am not sure how to weigh all the options. I know the end decision ultimately lies in what I want, but I am curious to get some opinions from those here.
Quick background - I am 26, always lived on the east coast, progressed through my career in information security quite well. For the past two years, I have traveled all over the world (love doing this), spoken at different conferences and shared my research with others. My focus on cyber threats has wained a bit in the past few months and data analysis has started to become a larger interest.
The two scenarios can be summed up like this:
Stable Change - I move to the west coast, head over to another commercial-based job (albeit one that has A LOT of data and a lot of smart people) where I still work with cyber threats, but with more data analysis and in a small team described as an "internal startup". The plan would be to stay there for a few years and maybe come back to the east coast depending on life circumstances.
Unstable Same - I remain on the east coast, forgo a salary for a period of time to do a cyber threat startup with some friends. Equity is offered, though transparency has been an issue while working out the details of joining. The basis for the company is nothing game-changing, but would do well in the current market. Moving to the west coast could be an option, but it would be 1.5-2 years out and depend on where the company was at the time. My work with this company would mostly be spent doing anything and everything, but also developing products and items to sell.
Either way, I am bound to learn a lot and both opportunities provide a different career path than what I have been on. My fear with not doing the startup company now is that I may not have the chance to do it later though the same is true for living on the west coast.
Quick background - I am 26, always lived on the east coast, progressed through my career in information security quite well. For the past two years, I have traveled all over the world (love doing this), spoken at different conferences and shared my research with others. My focus on cyber threats has wained a bit in the past few months and data analysis has started to become a larger interest.
The two scenarios can be summed up like this:
Stable Change - I move to the west coast, head over to another commercial-based job (albeit one that has A LOT of data and a lot of smart people) where I still work with cyber threats, but with more data analysis and in a small team described as an "internal startup". The plan would be to stay there for a few years and maybe come back to the east coast depending on life circumstances.
Unstable Same - I remain on the east coast, forgo a salary for a period of time to do a cyber threat startup with some friends. Equity is offered, though transparency has been an issue while working out the details of joining. The basis for the company is nothing game-changing, but would do well in the current market. Moving to the west coast could be an option, but it would be 1.5-2 years out and depend on where the company was at the time. My work with this company would mostly be spent doing anything and everything, but also developing products and items to sell.
Either way, I am bound to learn a lot and both opportunities provide a different career path than what I have been on. My fear with not doing the startup company now is that I may not have the chance to do it later though the same is true for living on the west coast.