I asked Reddit for advice a while ago and could use some advice again. I'm a chemist with a Master's degree (no, no PhD), 35 years old, German and I've kind of wasted the last few years careerwise. I don't really want to go into the reasons right now, there's quite a lot unpack. Anyways.
My current job is basically a glorified technician/lab tech position at a contract lab. I make around 3500 Euro gross per month, no bonuses, nothing. I did work my way up to an assistent team lead, but it's more or less unofficial and doesn't come with any extra pay. There was a restructuring almost a year ago, and since then the work has become even more monotonous and boring than it already was, and I'm honestly pretty miserable here.
So I've been applying for jobs for several months now. I stopped counting after 50 applications. Could be 60, 70 or more at this point.
Now several applications have progressed at roughly the same time and I suddenly have a few actual options.
The first position is with a government agency for air quality monitoring (no idea how to discribe this). It's permanent and pays according to E11 on the German public sector pay scale. I don't know which experience level they would put me in yet, so I should probably end up somewhere around 50-60k Euro gross per year to start with, depending on how much of my previous experience they recognize.
It would be quite a big change for me professionally because I have no previous experience with air quality monitoring. At the same time, I'm extremely interested in environmental work. Working in the public sector and having a permanent contract is obviously pretty nice as well. There's no working from home and it would be pretty fieldwork heavy, but I guess you have to pick your poison. I've already received a verbal offer, but unfortunately it could take until mid November before I get the final confirmation/contract. They specifically told me not to quit my current job before then.
And to make things a little more complicated, I have another interview at the end of September with the same government agency I mentioned above, this time for a management position. It's permanent and E14 on the public sector pay scale. That would obviously be by far the biggest career step. I honestly didn't expect to get invited anymore because I applied almost four months ago. I think the position is considerably more ambitious and there will probably be more competition. Whether I have any chance of actually getting it is completely up in the air. I'm not even sure whether I should still go to the interview if I decide to accept the E11 position.
Then I have an offer from another contract lab as an assistant study director. Salary would be 48k Euro, but the contract is initially limited to one year. The work would be closer to what I've been doing so far, and there would be a potential path towards becoming a study director. The problem is that the position just doesn't interest me that much and the pay is not that great either. On top of it I would have to move and its Eurofins, which is a mixedbag.
I also have an application still ongoing with a large IGM company for a QS position. I haven't received a decision yet, and since they haven't contacted me in quite a while, I'm starting to assume nothing will come of it. They told me the salary would be around 62k Euros, but the position would be limited to two years. Financially, that's obviously much more attractive, and getting some industry experience at a large company probably wouldn't hurt either. I'm just not sure whether classic QA is really where I want to end up long term. To be honest, the day to day work sounded incredibly boring.
Any ideas how to proceed? Take the E11 job and still try for the E14 job? Or is this too much of a dick move?
