Thank you for the reply. These questions are helpful.
1. If I knew it strongly thought I’d get another Big Job offer in 3-5 years, I’d feel more comfortable taking Medium Job now. Big Job is research oriented, so it’s less that I have hard skills and more that they see the soft skills in me (intelligence, interest in the subject matter, ability to communicate) and are willing to take a chance on me. I’ve had 2 other interviews for similar roles out of maybe 10 I applied for.
2. I think I could manage at Medium Job. I’m afraid of not being good/intelligent enough to succeed at Big Job and being embarrassed for it. Which kind of leads to #3…
3. I was in a job for several years where I had a manager who I had a bad relationship with. I was constantly walking in eggshells and terrified of making a mistake to the point where I’d wake up in the middle of the night to check a calculation in a spreadsheet for fear I’d done something wrong. I had a rough start (partially my fault) and dug myself out, but by that point the damage was done. He put down almost everything I did, my output, my insightfulness, and by the end I was so burnt out and stressed that I probably wasn’t performing as well as I could have been, which only reinforced his perception of me as an underperformer.
So I got a new job earlier this year, and they loved me, which really helped my confidence – until they told me I couldn’t work there (it’s not this exact situation, but think of it as they told me they’d sponsor my visa and then, after I came on, told me they can’t do sponsorships but gave me a few months to find something else). Basically, as soon as things started looking up for me, I got kicked down again.
Big Job, as a research position, requires me to be insightful and I think my experience with my former boss is making me scared I don’t have what it takes/am not smart enough to make it in that field. Medium Job requires writing reports, which my former boss also didn’t like my performance on, but is probably lower stakes and easier to “get right” than something that speaks to a personal quality like intelligence. So I guess I’d say Big Job is more similar, but it really depends on the relationship I have with my manager.
