What is the most important thing? From the time I entered the engineering profession, my primary goal was to rise into the partnership of a major design firm. My steps forward were in every sense methodical. I sat for both professional examinations as early as I could. I finished both exams early and passed both on the first try in an industry in which most people failed at least once. I became a registered professional engineer at the age of 27.
Every few years, I stepped up the ladder, rising from draftsman to designer to team leader to lead designer supervising multiple people to department head in charge of land development for a firm handling hundreds of millions of dollars of construction annually.
My big break came at age 45, when I was offered a promotion to senior associate that would have put me in the partnership four years later. This was the opportunity I had sought my entire career and should have been an easy choice. Nevertheless, such a life-changing decision required counting the cost.
I had watched the partners closely for the eight years of my employment there. They worked harder than any of us. They treated us well and always shared the wealth regarding salaries and bonuses. Under their leadership, we provided our clients outstanding service. I admired and respected all of them. Yet there were things about each of their lives that caused me to question the wisdom of joining their ranks.
The long and the short of my concerns revolved around their work weeks of 70-plus hours, never being able to leave the job at the office. None of them seemed to have a life other than work. It was evident their family relationships suffered for it. Although not one was divorced, some of their adult kids were lacking in basic life skills, at least partially due to inadequate guidance from their fathers.
In contrast, although I was one of their hardest-working employees, my work weeks usually ranged from 50 to 55 hours, never exceeding 57 hours. I had an exceptionally happy marriage of more than 20 years at that point and was a highly involved father to my three kids.
So I needed to make a choice. I wanted that promotion so bad I could taste it. I am convinced that I had the skills to succeed all the way to president of the company had I accepted it. However, after much thought and prayer, I knew the cost would be too great.
Today, I still have an exceptionally happy marriage of more than half a century to the same woman, which wouldn’t be nearly as strong if I had spent every waking moment on the job. My relationship with my now-adult kids is strong and loving, and they have all developed their life skills to their various potentials given positive parental influence.
Had I been too distracted to help raise the youngest, our problem child, she would likely have gone too far off the deep end to save, and her mother, my bride, would have suffered terribly trying to parent her without me. Today, although that problem child did stray for a time, she is now coming back to the value systems that we taught her. And it goes without saying that I am tremendously proud of all three of them.
To paraphrase what I said to one of the partners at the time, the hardest decision that I ever made was to decline their offer of promotion. I continued at that office as a department head for another eight years, and I still admire those partners and the ones who followed them. I understand that someone must do that job.
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