Job Offer!

Yesterday I accepted a job offer from New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) in the Air Quality Bureau!

I’m very excited about the offer. I start on Sept. 25, which is a very auspicious day for me. 12 years ago John and I went on our first date on September 25. Good things start on that date!

I think I will really like working for NMED even though the pay is significantly less than I could make at either of the local national labs. That’s not because it’s a lower level job, it’s just because New Mexico is such a poor state, and local government wages are quite low here. But I just want a job I like!

I had also interviewed at LANL on Thursday, and I enjoyed the interview. But they’re not going to decide until the end of the month. And I don’t want to turn down an actual offer and in order to wait for a possible offer, or I could end up with no offer!

Plus for me there are definitely a lot of advantages to working at NMED instead of a national lab. For one thing, as an environmental scientist, my mission is the same as the NMED mission. Whereas when working for a national lab, what I do is not the purpose of the company. Environmental compliance is just a necessary requirement. This lack of alignment with company purpose and mission can have a lot of subtle but persistent negative impacts on job satisfaction as well as career opportunities. At NMED I’ll be a core professional rather than support staff, doing what NMED does.

Also at NMED, if I don’t happen to end up liking my particular job, I could easily move around to other jobs. I didn’t have that mobility at Sandia. (John has the ability to move around at Sandia because he does mission work.) But my ability was very limited there compared to what I’ll have with this new job. That’s the hope at least!

And anyway, Santa Fe is way cool 😉

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