On job offers and career management (edited)

Recently i've been reading a fellow *'s musings on job searching and expectations and focus on career management, and although I mostly agree with his opinions and objectives, I can't stop but wondering if I (or most people, for that matter) can afford to be as straightforward as he seems to be.

In my career, and up until some 6 months ago, I've been mostly involved with Microsoft products and technologies. I've developed, administrated and and maintained applications, databases, systems and networks. However, Linux and Open Source in general have been my hobby and, i dare say, passion for the last 8 years or so. Cutting a long story short, in a Windows world I'm (somewhat) highly valued, but in a Unix\Linux context, I'm bound to be considered a junior staff member for a couple of years more.

Now, if the job title doesn't really bother me, the difference in wage is staggering. Enough to make me consider a jump back.

All this is only important when I'm faced with a difficult decision like I am right now.

I've managed to get a good deal of respect and appreciation on my current job, I've been involved with some very interesting technologies and have been given the chance to use Open Source technologies and am currently in the process of finishing up my first professional (cof...cof...) Ruby on Rails application, but the wage is ridiculous.

On the other hand, I have an offer to get back to a development only a sysadmin only position, but using .Net and other mostly Microsoft technologies. The pay is good, the challenge is well, challenging and the work environment as far as I could gather so far is very good. On the downside there will be plenty of grey suits and ties in my future. And a senior colleague who thinks rails is amateurish. But the boss says I can use whatever technologies I see fit to get the job done. And they both actually read my resume. And want _me_ to work for them.

Well, as you might have guessed the wage is the only thing that's making me consider the change, and the love for open technologies the only thing thats keeping me back.

In a ideal scenario I would refuse the change hands down, but these are not ideal times, so I'll have to sleep on it and hope for the strength to make the best decision.

Well things change quickly when you let them. There was a sysadmin position available too, and although I refused the developer job, I'll most likely be accepting the later. Stay tuned....