December Already

I can't believe how quickly the year has gone by. I suppose it didn't feel that fast in the process, but looking back, it seems like only a few months ago that I was posting about Christmas last year. I guess it's just the result of being heads down and focused on work and childcare all the time. We haven't had much winter weather here yet (even by Silicon Valley standards). With the exception of one early storm system, it's been warm and dry -- mid 70's earlier this week -- and the only indications of the season are the sporadic Christmas lights and the decorations and tree that I put up at home right after Thanksgiving. My wife's parents have been here at the grandparents house since mid-November, and her brother and his girlfriend visited for Thanksgiving, which we held outdoors on the patio since her brother wasn't vaccinated and we didn't want to our too-young-to-be-vaccinated son to get too close to him. 

In my last post I mentioned that I was considering taking a job in Boston. That conversation was never fully terminated, but I've largely allowed it to fade out. It was initially attractive because it was a partner position at one of the most profitable firms in the country, and even though it was a non-equity position, it was billed as being a short track to equity and offering significantly higher pay in the interim. But when I began to dig deeper, it became clear that the reason they were so profitable for their equity partners was that they had a large non-equity tier with no real prospects of ever making equity, and even though they say they "consider" non-equity partners for equity beginning in their 9th or 10th year after graduating law school, in reality it's common for non-equity partners to wait several additional years to make equity, even if they are among the lucky few actually destined for it. I believe in my capabilities, and I would have been the first partner in my practice area in their Boston office, so logically I would have had as good a chance as any to make equity, but when I was told by the hiring partner that he wasn't even sure he would give his star non-equity partner in New York a 50% chance of making equity, I knew I had to heavily discount that possibility. 

In the meantime, I did a little digging at my current firm to get a better sense of my prospects there, and I was told that I am on track to make equity partner next year, and that starting compensation for equity partners at my firm is about 40% higher than I had previously assumed (even though it's less than half of what new equity partners make at the other firm, it's still about the same as what I would expect a non-equity partner to start at there). I also was having trouble weighing the non-compensation factors, so I made a spreadsheet model to compare all of the factors that go into our quality of life, ranging from work factors, like the strength of the team, the type of clients, and the culture and politics of the firm, to non-work factors like the cost of housing and the climate, and gave weights and scores to all of those factors to try to quantify the differences between our life now and the proposed alternative. And I discovered that, although the prospect of a lower cost of living and a higher salary in Boston initially seemed attractive, the totality of the model leaned ever-so-slightly toward staying where I was, even before I was fully aware of how bright the prospects were at my current firm, which made the decision even easier. At the end of the day, it was a really good process, and where I had initially been having difficulty weighing the pros and cons in the abstract, it all became much more straightforward once I worked through the decision systematically. I suppose the other firm could still compete by offering commitments around giving me equity, but I don't think they will do that, so the whole sum of the story is that I'm even happier where I am than when I started.

Otherwise things have been quiet on the home front. My wife is struggling with back and joint pain of unknown origins; she's had pain in her neck and back for years that would lead to intense migraines, but it's been exacerbated recently and spread to her knees and hips, and she is having a harder and harder time with childcare and other daily tasks, let alone concentrating on work, so that is quite a hardship. She had an MRI months ago that didn't reveal anything conclusive, but she was advised to see a dermatologist about what appears to be psoriasis in order to better consider whether she has psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or some other ailment. She has been dragging her feet on getting that appointment, but I finally convinced her it was worth taking that next step to try to get a diagnosis and treatment, but she had been seeing people at Stanford and their dermatology appointments are booked out for months. We use Sutter/PAMF for our routine care, and we are weighing having her switch to them for this too just because Stanford has never seemed very interested in serving our needs. Stanford is supposed to have the greatest experts, but what is that worth if you can't see them when you need to! There have been lawsuits about Sutter Health's market power in our area, but at least we can usually get appointments there, even if they aren't always with the most credentialed doctors.