Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Much Is a Fun Job Worth?
Nicros writes "I have the good fortune to be a lead software engineer in a really fun company. The culture and people are great, and while the position has some down sides (distance from home, future opportunities), in general I'm quite happy there, and I wasn't looking for a new job. Now, I've had an offer to go be a software director for a new company. The pay is more than 10% better, the location is closer to home, and the people seem nice. I would get to grow a new group as I saw fit, following some regulatory guidelines. Problem is, I just can't decide what to do, and I'm not even sure why I can't decide. Maybe it has to do with leaving a job that I like (something I've never done) that just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe it's fear. I'm 40, so maybe it's just getting older and appreciating stability more. But then again, I have my current position dialed in, and could use a change. I have ambition, and my current company has made every effort to work with me to develop my career — probably more in the business development side, but that could be fun too. That career path is just more vague and longer-term than jumping right into a director position, with no guarantee that it would even work out. In the new company, software is not what this company does primarily; not many people would use the software, so the appreciation level would be much lower than my current position. Has anyone made a transition like this in software? How did it work out? Did you stay or did you go? Why? What's more important, the people and culture at a job, or the opportunities that job presents for future growth?"
A fun place to work is, well... fun! But if you aren't happy (pay, commute, promotion, etc) then you aren't happy and soon you'll start to resent the fun place.
Take my advice, find a job you are happy with and make it the fun place!
crazy dynamite monkey
It's the devil you know vs. the devil you don't. That's the hesitation, I'll bet.
Don't forget that you spend a major part of your life there. Unless this is an "up or out" kind of situation, stay. 10% more money is not that much. And building up a team comes with a serious risk of failure, often by factors outside of your control.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Unless they are paying you drastically more (20 or 30%), stay with the place you enjoy. Hell, you could just move closer to your current job.
It is hard to find a job you enjoy with people you like to work with. If this new place has problems, personal as well as business side, you are screwed. It will be hard to find a "fun" job again.
At 40, you should know by now that it isn't what your reward is, but how much you are enjoying it.
If a job offered me a 100% raise, but I had to commute an hour each way, I'd say no. My current commute is 7 minutes. That would mean I lose almost 2 hours of personal time in the evening every single day, and that is not worth doubling my salary to me. However, other people have different priorities for what they are looking to achieve.
If being closer to home and earning a little more money is more important to you and will bring you a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment than your current situation, then make the change. But if money isn't that important to you, you are "close enough" to home, and you are really happy at your current position, be sure you aren't just moving because "the grass is greener."
I'd rather have a job I like that pays 70K than a job that sucks for 100K. You spend A LOT of time there, so you might as well enjoy it.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
I've been there several times. Tell your current company about your offer, they will counter if they appreciate you as much as you say they do. Finish the negotiation process before you try to sort out your feelings about which position is best. If they don't your decision is made for you (you can't stay and still have any cred' if they don't try to keep you).
Somebody with those kinds of doubts doesn't really want to move. It's OK to stick with what you know. Just give yourself permission to be more concerned with security. Really. It's OK. A lot of people would love to be in your position. Yeah, somebody else might take job B, run with it, and make senior VP. They have no doubts; but if you try to do the Evil Kneival jump with doubts, you're gonna miss the ramp. When the jump is right, you won't even think about looking back, and you'll hit it just right.
Take the new money and be sure to burn your bridges on your way out the door.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I took a course decades ago that mentioned 'Hygeine needs' - google that. From that sort of thing...
Herzberg asked people about times when they had felt good about their work. He discovered that the key determinants of job satisfaction were Achievement, Recognition, Work itself, Responsibility and Advancement.
He also found that key dissatisfiers were Company policy and administration, Supervision, Salary, Interpersonal relationships and Working conditions.
So - more salary isn't as important a thing as other stuff. If you're underpaid (or think you are), you're unhappy. If you are paid enough you're happy. More than enough isn't a great lift.
I tend to agree - I could earn a helluva lot more in the US or Europe - meantime I'm enjoying low-stress NZ while we raise the kid and walk beaches with the dog. And I earn enough.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
This all comes down to if you want to play it safe (stability motivates you), or if you want to roll the dice and gamble (change motivates you).
I speak from experience. I made a risky choice in 2000 and joined a startup, quitting a secure job at IBM that I would (in all likelihood) still have today. The job I went to paid better, was a lot of fun, exciting, challenging, and in the end a failure. My career has never fully recovered, and I am certain that had I stayed at IBM I would be finincially way further ahead than I am now. By all reasonalble criteria, I should regret my decision.
Yet I *had* to do it: I crave re-invention and change. I wouldn't be happy stuck in the douldrums of a stagnant work environment. I work for myself now, but I have no problems envisioning myself going back to being a cog in a big machine again. I'm open to, and embrace, the possibilities.
But as for you, you have to make that decision for yourself. The operative word about your job is not "fun", it's "happiness". You're in a fortunate position of being satisfied with your career, so you need to decide if you will regret not taking the opportunity to do more (and risk that you will fail). Good luck.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
The conventional wisdom says never take a counteroffer. Your loyalty is questioned so you'll be the first to go during layoffs, they'll take the pay bump out of your future raises, and other people will eventually find out. I've also heard about people taking a counteroffer and not actually getting one... by the time you realize this, the other position is filled.
It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for.
The people and culture were worth more. You spend such a large amount of your waking time on the job, its miserable not to like it 100%. Even if you have to sacrifice advancement, or commute, or whatever. There were times when I commuted 25 miles farther each way for half the bennies, just because of the team.
Conversely if you can't stand a place because of the atmosphere or management style, or whatever, then it doesn't matter if they're next door and offer a 200% premium... it just won't be worth it, and you won't last very long there.
Been there, done that. A few times no less.
C|N>K
Flip a coin!
You haven't finished explaining the algorithm
Flip a coin!
a) If you agree, great.
b) If you want to flip again, go for 2/3 or otherwise reconsider the rules, then you wanted the other decision.
Really, while the question is not short, there is still much data missing (how far is "further away", how fun is "fun", etc, etc.). There is no exact formula that can help.
I'd rather have a job I like that pays $70K (which is, practically speaking, about what I actually need to pay the bills, pay off debt and support my family) than a job I like that pays $45K and two part-time jobs I like that each pay $10K - which is what I have now.
There is absolutely something to be said for liking a job, but there's also something to be said for at least getting raises in line with inflation...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
This is ridiculous, unless you like work for the mafia or something. Maybe there is some lunatic employers out there that hold their positions like a girlfriend but most realize that people (especially talented ones) might be tempted by outside offers. The only time I could think of that a normal employer would do stuff like that is if you are obviously leveraging the new position to twist their arm. A little honesty goes a long way, if he brought this question to his current employer they would respect the honesty and heads up most likely. I've left a couple companies who have countered and they would gladly take me back tomorrow.
Fair enough.
My job pays enough, barely, but enough. That said I love my job. My boss is awesome, my co-workers are excellent, perks are decent.
I flatly refused offers (same company even) unless they had a minimum 20% premium above what I make now.
That's what a good job is worth to me.
If (in OP's case) it's closer to home and your commute costs saved + that 10% raise == 20% then I'd consider it (based wholly on my model).
To knowingly go into a job that sucked? only if I knew I was losing my good job, or the pay was 7 digits (absurd? sure, but that's what it costs to lease my soul. two years at that then I can retire if I do it right)
-nB.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I totally agree... don't take the higher paying job, you have to love your job or it is not worth it... send them my resume instead lol :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
I left a secure and extremely low-paying development/dba where I was the only programmer and got to call all the development shots to work in a dev team for a company that paid me 60% more than I was making at a previous company. In the year and a half I worked there, almost all the company's original founders were purged, we went through three directors of software engineering, two directors of qa, and two head product managers. The UX guy was ran off by a VP who wanted to do the usability themselves. And I had to serve under junior programmers who were only senior in the sense that they had been with the company for years, and every boneheaded thing they wanted to do was rubber-stamped by management. Project management for the desperately needed rewrite of the company's code was given to someone who had never done project management before. At some point development of that core product was transferred to an Indian offshore company to be worked on by programmers not familiar with the project's programming language; of course this didn't matter, because I wasn't doing very well at this company because I wasn't invited meetings where important architectural details were being discussed (which I was nevertheless responsible for implementing even though no one told me about them). The company was owned by a private equity firm, whose goal all along was probably reducing headcount and maximizing short term profit at the cost of large employee turnover and bad code. So looking back at my situation, I'm really not surprised at all that it happened.
Was this experience worth the 60% pay increase? I supposed I learned how to not run a software company, which might be valuable in the future. But my advice is to look for warning signs that might indicate that the new company might be extremely dysfunctional. Warning signs like the company being owned by a private equity firm, or all the founders of the business who made it great being purged, or lots of turnover among senior engineers and a dev mix made up of recent college grads and mediocre lifers who coast on their seniority. And try to figure out if possible why the previous guy left.
What are your drivers?
If you enjoy making software, and maybe running a team, then don't switch.
If you enjoy not knowing what's coming, dynamic situations with lots of change, and continually dealing with things that you haven't dealt with before, then change.
The money difference is not a big inducement, I'd say. Especially since you don't say how this new company will be funded - so you may be buying into 6 months of salary at 10% more, and then no job.
If after that you do think you are still interested in the job, it's really important to ask what you will control. If the big decisions are already made, and you are just a caretaker, then think twice as hard. Check how much budget you have. Check the constraints you'd be under. Check when you have to deliver software, and decide how viable it is. And ask for shares. A directorship without ownership is a fantastic way to load legal responsibility onto someone without the benefits of that responsibility. Culture of a company is important, what are your co-directors like? You'll set the tone for the people in your department - if you think they don't fit in, you'll be able to lose them - so that part of culture the culture is less important. The hat you wear as a director is completely different from making software; it's as table-tennis is to riding a bike.
Yep, I've done it. But it absolutely wouldn't be for everyone. Do the things that make you happy.
The red flag for me was,
In the new company, software is not what this company does primarily.
I've always tried to be in companies in which what I did was directly tied to the company's main business. There is an analogy to a river: You want to be in the main stream, not in some backwater, so that when things get tight and money dries up, you're not left high and dry -- as in, a department or division that can be conveniently closed as a "cost reduction," with little (immediate) effect on their main business.
A corollary to this applies to physical locations, too: Remote sites will be closed before corporate headquarters will be, so pay attention to your job's location.
Besides, if you're not in the company's main business, you could develop a fabulous thing, and nobody at your company will appreciate it. (Think Xerox PARC. There are many examples at smaller scales.)
Enjoying what you do is *everything*.
I can relate personally. I had an aerospace job once. Loved it. Until we sold out to a big corporation who saw we were profitable. They brought in lots of bean counters and other useless folk whom I suspect were hired into a "good job" as a return favor for a relative's help getting funding.
Working there became like hell for me. Lots of "men of the suit" micromanaging everything. What was once "creativity" became "re-inventing the wheel", what was once "meticulous diligence" became "perfectionist"- in a negative light. Everything became justified only on a profit basis, lots of points for making things cheap, and no-one seemed to care whether or not the thing would work or be maintainable.
At one time, sleeping, eating, or having to attend to bodily functions were a royal nuisance for me because they trumped my work. After management succeeded in "de-funning" the work, I began looking forward to the end of the day and hating like all getout to get out of bed in the morning. When I voiced my concerns, the reply was down the lines of "that's why it's called work - and why your pay is called compensation". Well, it used to be fun. If I just wanted money, I would have been a plumber. Not much fun, but people with a stopped up toilet will pay damn near anything to have it work again.
I was making good money, but my soul just wasn't there anymore. Forces valued far more than my engineering skill were at work, forces of pure economics. We had the money for cosmetic things and "leadership", but I would have to justify things like getting time to explore new technologies. I lost drive. No-one else seemed to care. We were so inundated with Government money all that seemed to matter was meetings and forms. We could always outsource the work, put our name on it, then our commitment would be met. Handshakes and hefty checks for everyone in the upper echelons.
I was just getting ulcers, high blood pressure, and water retention problems which I think was due to my anxiety over being responsible for things I had no control over. I was just a lowly lab rat - not much use to a megamoney corp.
I make nowhere near what I used to make, but at least I enjoy my day building embedded controllers ( mostly Arduino based ) along with the analog/power interfaces. I dabble in refrigeration too, lately working on ice-bank technologies using propane refrigerant and arduino based controllers. I get to play with Dallas DS18B20 temperature sensors, I2C busses, ADS1115 digitizers, Ferromagnetic memories, DS1307 clocks, linked together with YellowJacket WIFI interfaces.
Like messing with race cars or sports, I get a kick of seeing how many BTU ( MJ ) I can transfer to the ice-based phase-change energy storage with the energy I have available.
This is a heck of a lot more interesting than filling out all the forms and keeping time sheets of numerous "simultaneous" projects, at 6 minute resolution, for projects falling further and further behind because when I am working on one, someone is always badgering me about yet another one. The time sheets were a joke anyway - as we all knew certain projects were running low on funding, but it was politically inexpedient to charge time to them - but they had to be done. Well-funded projects took the brunt of everything. ( Just like an insured patient in a hospital ).
Bottom line.... if you are not happy, your enthusiasm will soon leave you, then you will eventually be fired for not being a "team player". Best find something you enjoy so you will make money for those who employ you. .
Money isn't everything. Observe how the rich often abuse their cars as well - they always have plenty of money to pay the mechanic to keep them fixed. Their skill is in getting paid. That is not one of my skills. I'd rather eat at McDonalds in peace than in the fanciest restaurant in town, full of ulcers and stress of trying to be something I am not.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
It's not just more pay, though. It's an upgrade in title. While that isn't that important in the grand scheme of day-to-day, when you go for the NEXT job, being a director has different implications than being a lead engineer. The next company will be more likely to hire you in at a management level instead of an IC level.......which usually entails more pay / perks.
10% isn't enough of an increase to leave a job you KNOW you like for one that you MIGHT like.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Enjoying what you do is *everything*
Absolutely! You'll be hating life if you have a rotten job, no matter what it pays.
Some might think that saving their marriages, feeding their families, paying off debts, and the great difficulty of getting another job in a terrible economy (seems the economy is always terrible), and the like are reasons to put up with the job from Hell. Be stoic about it. No. Saw one damned fool who got married on the understanding that he had to have a steady job. She hit him with a prenup 2 weeks before the wedding. Told him to sign or the wedding was off. He signed. He was doing anything to keep his job. Anything. Yet the things he did to keep his job, things like framing others for his mistakes, repeatedly trying to snow customers with loads of bull, bullying and browbeating underlings, sabotaging anyone who might show him up whether or not that was intended, and general dirty office politicking but assured that he would be fired, as eventually did happen. He understood that, but could not bring himself to act differently, he was so afraid. I don't know what happened to his marriage.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
was in leaving a job I loved to take a job that sucked but paid a lot more. 2 years of that job almost killed me.
Now on the other hand, if you're really serious, take a handful of people in the new company out to lunch. Buy them pizza, and talk to them. About life, interests, girlfriends, families, and see if they're a good fit. Don't talk to your bosses, talk to your peers in the new company, and the people who would work for you. That's the people who can help you make the decision.
Taking a counter offer has a lot of down sides. The replies here concentrate on the most common fear, that folks will question your loyalty, and/or your boss will retaliate in some way. I actually think those are unlikely outcomes.
What actually happens is more subtle. The money is supposed to make you happy. There was a reason you obtained a job offer in the first place, you were unhappy about something. Your leadership is going to assume that by paying you more money you will no longer be unhappy. This is only true if what made you go looking was money. Otherwise that annoying boss will still be there. The soul sucking project must still be completed. The crappy commute continues to happen every morning. Not only do you still have to deal with all the things that made you unhappy, but now you have to think about what could have been if you had taken the other job every time they really piss you off.
I know multiple people who took the counter offer. Not a single one ended up happy. There is only one case where I think it is a good idea, and that is if you're being paid significantly below market rates. Most companies balk at more than a 10-15% raise for a new hire or promotion, so if you're more than 15% down it's hard to make it up. Taking a counter offer ups your base, and lets you immediately shop for a new job where you can tell them your current (now higher) salary and it's true and verifiable.
Otherwise, I'd really advise never taking a counter offer, and if that's the case there's really not much point in getting one. All it does is make your decision seem harder, and/or make you less positive about the new job. Neither are good for your long term emotional health.
Don't think my post is coming from a young'un who is putting down older workers; I'm 44. You're literally at the end of your rope, career-wise and so am I. You have a chance to get a 10% raise and transition into management (away from the deathtrap of IT). OMFG, DO IT NOW NOW NOW. Do it while you can. Get the money now before the industry pegs you a "has been".
Seriously. Go. Even if your'e a bit less happy you'll be better off career-wise and retirement-wise. It's the adult, smart choice. Go.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
If you love your job, you are the 1%. Most people dread going to work. A 10% bump in pay is not going to change that for the vast majority of them. Money is just money, happiness is a state of being. Not long ago, I was offered a 50% raise to leave my senior position at a small company to go work for a much larger one. Negotiations went well until the very end. In the "afterhour" when it was apparent the job was mine, I happened to ask about the desktop. Being a senior employee at a small company, I am accustomed to having vast flexibility. The norm is two desktops, one Linux and another Windows for testing, with a trio of monitors, plus a Mac laptop so all the major platforms can be tested. I was informed they run Windows XP, IT evaluates ALL hardware requests, and that is that. It was then I realized that trading guru status in a small company for being just another random coder at a large corporation would require a huge revision of expectations. In the end my family helped me decide that time with them (work at home now), happiness with my day to day computing experience, and overall flexibility was worth more then a 25% raise after taxes and commuting expenses.
Your situation is yours however, good luck, and I hope it works out well for you.
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
Faulty logic. The time you save is the time at the end of your life, not the time when you're young and can do things. In short, not all time is equal.
No. The reason you flip a coin is because the coin will land on the correct choice for you, if it's a legitimate coin-flip. Otherwise, your body would find a way to shut it down.
There's been plenty of work done studying it and it disagrees with your assertion. People who take counter-offers have lower job satisfaction, are less likely to be promoted and have a tendency to leave for a different company within a short window of accepting it. The only thing that is ridiculous is you thinking you can somehow make a definitive statement on this.
Having said that it doesn't mean that it is never beneficial to accept counter-offers, that every company is the same etc. One fundamental point is that many of the cases where the counter-offer worked out badly are where the person disliked their job, boss, company culture etc so simply adding more money didn't solve the underlying issue.
So it is 70k vs 77k. Not worth it in my opinion. Not if he is happy where he is. And 10% more for a director role? Seems low.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I just got a new boss (promoted from within our group) and I to him mentioned how companies treat engineering and software as a cost center - a necessary evil to be minimized. All my old bosses would agree. Sales people get a commission because they can say - look, if I didn't make THAT sale then THAT money wouldn't come in. Product development is so far removed from the money that it get's viewed quite differently. Now you can argue that if the sales guy didn't have THAT product that we designed and wrote code for, then THAT money wouldn't be here. Somehow that doesn't fly. So back to my new boss.... A few day later he came back and said fuck that "necessary evil" thing - I don't ever want here people say that. We're going to market our controls (my group does controls/algorithms and such) in terms the customers can understand and our business line people can understand. They're going to want our product because it performs better than the other guys because of what we do. We're going to sell what we do inside the company and out.
And you know, I have to agree with him. If you think IT is like maintenance - to be called when something is broken, then you will be considered a necessary evil. If you get on top of the issues and then start finding out how to proactively make your (internal) customers happy, you'll be viewed as an asset and treated with more respect, not as a drain on the company.