Should I give up tenured professor position to help DH move higher?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
If your husband works for Danaher, they move leadership around all the time. So after the 3-5 years abroad it'll be a different location. Then another location. There's no peace for a Danaher executive.
If I'm buying your story, the obvious answer is that you stay put with the family and he travels and visits you frequently. |
Anonymous
| I feel all those of you who are advising OP to not giving up her job are biased by her job title. OP’s family clearly doesn’t need her income and she will put her family/marriage under a lot of stress by doing the long distance thing you guys recommended. Will you suggest the same thing if OP is just working a regular corporate job making 190k? |
Anonymous
How is the family/marriage under a lot of stress if dad flies in once a month and family meet up on regular vacations and holidays? DH is a very high performer. At this level long distance relationships aren't unusual. During my expat days I met men who kept family at home while living halfway across the world. It was just for a few years and they made it work. |
Anonymous
No it's not about title at all. It's about what the job actually entails: (1) extreme flexibility...other than teaching you are usually 100% in charge of your own time, and busy periods naturally correspond to the school calendar, so great for parents (2) absolute security. You will not get fired even for pretty bad performance...this makes it a good gig for the ups and downs of life, e.g. if there is a crisis, eldercare, etc., (3) nearly impossible to get again once you leave, (4) no clear boss, so great autonomy/choose who one works with. Regular corporate jobs have none of these features. |
Anonymous
No, I wouldn't suggest the same thing, but that's because OP having tenure puts her in a very favorable position with regards to job security. If she had a regular corporate job, she could get laid off at any time; that's not the case with a tenured professor. Regarding the fact that OP's family doesn't need her income, while that may be true, she mentioned that she really enjoys her job. That should play a factor in things. |
Anonymous
Yes, because I would not recommend that any woman, ever, with any job, give up her career for a man. |
Anonymous
A corporate job is usually a lot more portable, so it would be a different argument. One could probably find remote work. Honestly, I doubt a PhD would be happy playing expat SAHM. Ask me how I know... |
Anonymous
| I work at a university, and I've seen professors with admin responsibilities go abroad for a year or two with spouse and then come back. I've also seen professors leave for multiple years for a government position and then be welcomed back -- I'd talk with your Dean about options. |
Anonymous
|
I work with people at the C-level or very senior corporate leadership pulling in these kinds of salaries. The wives generally don't work for a good reason, these jobs move around a lot and making it hard for her to keep to her career track. But some wives do work.
And what is also typical is for the family to stay based in one place while the husband follows his career and lives in a pied a terre and flies home for the weekends, something made easy these days and avoids the hassles of relocating families and kids too often, especially when turnover in these jobs are also frequent, either up or sideways to a different company or failing out. If he's going abroad, the visits are less frequent but they still happen. Most people giving you advice don't know how this world operates and how the dynamics changes. The rewards are high, very high. You're not living in a middling suburbia any more and your DH will be moving with very different people and circles. You're being elevated into a totally different world. I'm not talking about money, but what people do to make it work changes completely, and this includes relationship dynamics. The idea that it will destroy the marriage if DH works overseas for a few years and shuttles back and forth is a good example, such a relationship arrangement makes perfect sense to people in this world but doesn't to people who are plodding middle class afraid of divorces and affairs. Your DH is also a very high performer. What he can do is different from most people. If it's London, he will get a small pied a terre and fly back every month for 5-6 days and you'll join him in London on vacations. He'll be very busy with his career so he won't really miss the family (too often) and will have late hours enough often. He'll work on the plane to the US. And he will put up with the effort and stamina, it'll be effortless for him. It does get tricker if it's further afield like HK or Singapore or Tokyo but it doesn't sound like he's going to those places. |
Anonymous
| Your husband should buy out your teaching obligations so you can hang on to your position for a while. Start a research project in the new location or research or teach online. (What is your field?) |
Anonymous
You don’t think someone in a high power position not seeing his wife/kids for 7 months each year is not going to have a higher chance to cheat? |
Anonymous
So you would recommend OP to give up her job if the gender in their situation switches? |
Anonymous
Yeah that post reads like some fan fiction. These types of people do not have enviable marriages. They stay together on paper but it’s just for optics. |
Anonymous
This - or take the 1 year of sabbatical and see how it goes. I wouldn't quit first. Those big jobs can get pulled out from under you pretty quickly and you might be coming back sooner than you think. |
Anonymous
Not op but I am curious, how was your experience doing this? |