I need career advice
Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no health insurance (though we do get $ on our checks to go toward costs), fairly bare-bones retirement plan, etc. I also feel kind of aimless at this job. There is no clear path for raises or promotions. It's too small of a company for that.
I got an offer today for a job with a company that a former manager of mine works at (We both left our previous jobs around the same time, so no poaching concerns there). It's an opportunity to change my specialty from backend development (databases, server-side code) to frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). I've always enjoyed frontend development more than backend. Feel free to giggle about this terminology because it's definitely ridiculous. The job basically resolves all of my benefits issues. Unlimited vacation, pretty good health insurance, and a more robust retirement plan. There are also very clear paths for raises/promotions. In fact one of the first things you do when you get hired is sit down with your manager and department head and plot out a career track for yourself. So in my case I'm aiming for team management or something along those lines in a few years. So they would cater my training and promotions around that. There's a guaranteed yearly raise, plus a nice 5% bonus at end of the year.
So what's the problem? Because the second job seems perfect, right? Well the second job pays nearly 12% less a year. So what's the problem? Because that's an insane drop in pay, so clearly stay where I'm at, right? Well I was told by my former manager (and potentially new department head) that the plan would be to fast-track me into something closer to my current salary once I'm there for a few months and start excelling at my job. And I trust this guy because he fought for me to get raises twice when I worked under him before. It's rare to work under someone who will go to bat for you, and he was always that guy for me and I've no reason to think he wouldn't be again.
Because the way I see it, once I get a raise or promotion under my belt I should be pretty close to where I'm at now, but with substantially better benefits. And in a place with more of a future for me than my current job.
I just really don't know what to do here. I've "made a decision" in my head about a dozen times today, going back and forth between options. I kind of feel like it's worth taking the hit in the short term to be working at a place that will pay off better in the long term. Not just financially, but I'll get to broaden my skill set and actually have a concrete plan for progressing in my career.
Looking for any advice, or opinions, or whatever. I'm completely torn here.
edit -- Just wanted to thank everyone here. I decided to accept the job offer. My wife and I are working on a plan to weather the loss of income. Next step is writing the resignation letter....which always sucks. I hate disappointing people and it's a small company that I'm leaivng so my departure will be felt.
Quality of life and quality of work environment matter more than flat income, and they make jobs WAY more sustainable in the long-term. A pay cut might sting in the moment, but based on what you’ve shared, it sounds to me like the new position is a better path moving forward.
Agreed on all points, but I will add this:
The new job is a 12% pay cut, but have you @hamstergeddon done the math to see what the benefits that this new job offers that the current job does not? I'm of two minds on this so bare with me...
On the one hand health insurance, vacation days, and retirement packages don't pay the bills, but are what HR people call the "total compensation package" and I hate it because it's usually their way of weaseling out of a way to actually pay you what you're worth/want. However checking out Healthcare.gov, the lowest deductible plan I'd grab is about $500 per month and the insurance being offered by the job is probably better than that. Retirement pay doesn't help right now, but is money you don't have to pony up yourself for the future.
Is the 12% cut just base pay or 12% even when factoring in the EOY bonus?
No matter what I'm taking a decent sized hit. It doesn't really recoup the 12% base cut. It's definitely a step backwards, but it would position me better for future promotions/raises than where I'm currently at. So after thinking on this for a day or two now I feel like I need to decide if it's worth taking a risk for a better long-term at the expense of the short-term. And I'm still super conflicted. Probably won't know until I send the text to the hiring manager one way or the other.
Maybe find out what you can about quality-of-life issues. Do you think you'll learn more? Is the commute shorter?
I'll definitely learn more at the new job (which I accepted this morning after a lot of thinking this weekend). I basically work in a vacuum at the current job with zero input from other developers to push me to do better or to learn from. New job will have a whole team dedicated to the same project I can pull experience from.
Both jobs are remote, but technically the commute will be longer because coincidentally the new job will line up with my planned move of my home office from inside the house to inside a shed out back.
To be honest it's hard to make anything closer to an educated guess without at least fuzzy numbers. For example, a 12% cut from making 200k a year is very different from a 12% cut from making 40k a year (that is, if you make 200k it'd mostly be a cut into discretionary, luxury spending, whereas at 40k it will be hitting into core living costs). In the same vein, it's possible that the health insurance alone would make up most of the 12% raw pay delta.
Without specific, it sounds like the other job is better not just for a potential career at the company, but shipping impact for job hopping as well.
Yeah I wasn't sure if I should share the actual salary or not. But I will say that a year ago when I worked at my previous job, I was making less than I'd be making at this potential job and we managed fine. We may need to drop some "nice to haves", but we won't be going broke by any means.
Benefits are huge. My employer pays something like 20% below standard industry rates. But benefits are outstanding.
Having a high 401k matching, good health insurance (ideally with vision and dental too), and a good number of vacation days will vastly outweigh 12% salary cut at almost any wage.
At my salary, I value 1 vacation day at roughly a 1% raise. Prior to this inflation spike over the last year, I would've taken more vacation days if it were an option 100% of the time.
This.
It's sometimes hard to quantify, but roughly, I would guesstimate that a 12% "pay cut" with decent benefits actually pays you more (right out the gate, w/o any potential raises) than the better-paying job with almost-no-benefits.
One thing on this "perk" is that you will really know what kind of culture they have with time off. Research has shown that companies with unlimited vacation can often have less vacation taken over time than someone who was drawing from the yearly bucket. See if they track time off and if they can maybe provide with you statistics on utilization.
I accepted the offer this morning, but I've heard that as well. I made sure to ask a lot about the company culture from the people I was interviewing with and I got nothing but positive feedback. Then I found out one of the guys I spoke to was leaving the company, so he really had nothing to lose. Glassdoor reviews also hyped up the company culture and vacation benefits. So there's always a chance that they're weird about people actually taking vacation, but I've at least done my research about the company culture and think it'll be okay.
Have you negotiated about salary yet? I don't know enough about the context to say for sure, but I'll point out that "It sounds like a great job but I'm not sure if I want to take a 12% pay cut. Can you do better?" is a very reasonable business argument to make. If they're willing to go higher, this seems like a good time to find out.
(And even better if you can come up with an alternative job offer, but that would take more work.)
I spoke to both my connection at the company (previous manager) and the hiring manager and they're not able to budge. According to my previous manager he pushed really hard to get me as close to my asking salary as possible and where they settled is as high as he could get them to go. Hiring manager basically confirmed that in a roundabout way. So that's unfortunately a dead end.
It sounds like you are fixated on the take home pay.
Compensation includes all benefits. If the company is contributing to health care insurance, retirement benefits, vacation pay, along with bonuses and a guaranteed yearly raise? Sounds like the new company will be spending more on you, if you look at total compensation cost.
Plus if this is the career you want, with a manager you want to work for....?
Are you in HCOL region (e.g., Bay Area), MCOL region (e.g., Atlanta), or LCOL region (e.g., Wichita)?
Personally, I would take the new job. You aren’t really happy with your current position, you would have more life outside of work, and would likely be on track to be making your salary soon enough.
Do you have some cash saved up outside of a retirement account?
If you aren't already, learn to live below your means, start saving the extra, or paying down debt, and quit worrying about which job pays a bit more/less, and take the job you like better.
If you're not familiar with it, check out https://old.reddit.com/r/Fire/
Make sure to check your years experience vs salary at something like levels.fyi. The right answer might be looking for an entirely different opportunity that would give you benefits, quality of life, and pay. Development is a hot market, you can have your cake and get paid too.
Do you need what you'd lose in the income delta?
If you do, try to negotiate for a higher salary, potentially even by giving up some of the benefits you don't care about.
Otherwise, just take the job you prefer, not the one that pays better.