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It's an interesting question you're asking. No obvious answer. But here are the things to think about.

You should look at your net assets and liabilities, as a whole, in your life when making decisions. In other words, don't think about these decisions separately -- think holistically, then make the right decision taking into account every last thing.

Example: let's say you have a big mortgage (say, $300k). And you also have $100k saved up that you're currently putting into some pretty safe investments (e.g. US government bonds, or perhaps even just a CD at a bank for negligible interest). By not putting the $100k into paying off your mortgage, you're essentially doing the equivalent of borrowing $100k (at whatever your mortgage rate is) in order to invest it. That's ultimately a risky move, even though many, many people do it (including myself many years ago). It just seems so "safe" -- but it really isn't.

I don't know all the specifics, but I believe #3 is likely best (borrowing from your own retirement, assuming you can and will pay it back, and that the interest/etc is paid to yourself and also has some tax benefits, probably). #2's not great for a few reasons: it's high interest, and it's also ultimately going to hurt your ability to get a mortgage as well (because banks will account for all of your liabilities when deciding how much to loan you).

Don't worry about the issue of "taking money out of compound interest gain" (in #3) -- because you're ultimately doing so in order to avoid #2; if you did #2, you'd essentially be borrowing money at 6.7% in order to invest it in your retirement (at whatever rate it's earning right now; and very few people are really getting anywhere near 6.7% in low-risk gains these days).

What I don't know is whether #1 might even be a better choice than #3. If you haven't bought a house before, I believe some laws in the US allow you to borrow from a 401(k) in order to make a first-time home purchase (once again, paying the interest to yourself). If that's the case still, and if it applies to your retirement account, then #1 sounds better than #3 even -- because you keep your money in your tax-free retirement account over the next 2 years earning interest, and then you borrow from your retirement account only when you're ready to buy a house. You might investigate this path; if everything lines up like I suspect it will, #1 is strictly better than #3.

It’s great to hear from you, as always. I hope that you’ve been well.

For me, leaving Microsoft was a fairly easy decision because I knew that I

wanted to become an IC again. I figured if I wanted to remain competitive

in the industry, I needed to have some Linux skills. I looked at several

Linux positions within Microsoft, but they were fairly rare and were mostly

being eliminated. So even though there were a lot of potentially fun next

steps (e.g. an IC job in Office Labs sounded like fun), I knew I needed to

leave in order to get the skills I wanted.

I think before you make a move, you have to be pretty clear in your own mind

what you want. Roy Disney (Walt’s brother) apparently said something like,

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” Once

it became clear to me that I wanted to be an IC with Linux skills, I knew I

had to leave Microsoft, and that all companies I’d consider would have to be

based on Linux. But the things you value may be different; several

examples of possibilities:

· Function (e.g. PM vs. bizdev vs. engineer)

· Role on a team

· Compensation

· Commute / telecommute

· Work/life balance

· Learning opportunities

· Career growth opportunities

· Interest in product/feature/domain

Once you know the top 2-3 things most important to you in your next job, I

think it’ll become easier to know whether Microsoft is the right place. You’ll

be better able to screen out the wrong jobs within Microsoft, or find the

right jobs outside Microsoft.

For me, my list looked something like:

1. Learning opportunity (specifically Linux)

2. Interest in product/feature/domain (end-user web software)

In order to get this, though, I sacrificed quite a bit:

1. Compensation ($50k less per year base/bonus, and several hundred

thousand dollars less stock)

2. Role on team (I didn’t join as any sort of tech lead/architect –

just an engineer)

3. Commute (went from 10 mins to 35 mins per way)

4. Work/life balance (about 55-60 hrs per week now)

5. Career growth opportunities (basically a much worse deal than I had

at MS)

Those sacrifices, though, were fairly easy for me to make, with the

exception of the commute, which I find somewhat painful. But they were easy

because I knew how badly I wanted the learning opportunity and how

interested I was in end-user web software.

I’m a bad negotiator when it comes to compensation. It’s hard to know how

to negotiate if you don’t have much visibility into the new company’s

compensation plan and career ladder/etc. But in general, I do fairly poorly

at negotiation (as evidenced by point #1 above), so I’m probably not the

best one to give advice. However, the one piece of advice I’d have is to

make sure you have at least 2 other offers in hand before you talk to the

company you really want to work for – that way, you have something credible

that you can negotiate with.

I unfortunately don’t know much about Cloud Drive (I don’t know anybody on

it). But in general, what I hear about Amazon is that it’s really important

to choose your team carefully – some teams have terrible work experiences,

others work really well. So I think it’ll be important to find someone that

knows something about that team.