Author Topic: Looking for some career advice  (Read 2506 times)

dizzean

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Looking for some career advice
« on: March 02, 2017, 11:41:50 AM »
I currently work as an IT business analyst making $78k at a company where I only need to travel 1 mile and a 30 minute train ride to get to work. Most weeks I work between 40-50 hours and I enjoy most of what I do. My only real complaint is that the team I'm on has a culture that asks me to be available 24/7 and I think it'll be hard to move up. I started at this company 6 months ago.

I've been offered a job as a Project Manager from the company that owns the software that I worked in at my last job. They reached out to me and I honestly wasn't even looking. They've offered me $70k with a bonus based on billable hours (estimated $10k-20k a year) and $7500 a year for health insurance. The big caveat here is that it's a company based in Europe so I'd work from home and travel throughout US and Canada up to 50% of the time.

When they asked my salary expectations I told them 100k to 130k because I really want to pull down 6 figures if I'm going to be doing that much travel. I'm going to try to counter offer to at least get closer to $90k.

I'm hesitant to take this offer because it's barely a bump over my current role. However working from home would be awesome, and I think I'd have some fun with the travel.

I'm 30 without kids but they could be in my near future and my wife could stay home ane I'd be home most of the time too, so this seems like a good environment to raise a kid in too.

I'm wondering if you smart people have any thoughts or advice?


dizzean

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2017, 11:46:25 AM »
I should add I've been in a new industry for 6 months. This job would be back in an industry that I'm very good at. My job I could do an average guys 8 hour day in 2 hours, I actually left because I was bored...

GizmoTX

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2017, 11:49:04 AM »
Are you married?
Do you want to travel?
How well do you know the company that wants to hire you?

dizzean

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2017, 11:58:08 AM »
Married 8 years.

Traveling is fun but with my wife.

I know this company very well.

skekses

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2017, 11:58:21 AM »
50% travel is a lot so that would be the biggest consideration from my point of view. When I first started my career, I really loved the travel because I didn't like my home state and it gave me a chance to check out other places. After I moved travel didn't hold as much appeal because I viewed it as too much of a disruption in my life. Unless you are a very regimented person, it's easy to get out of shape and gain a bunch of weight while on the road and if you have an active social life at home then you may feel that sense of missing out. Not saying that these are insurmountable challenges, but I wanted to make the point that there are qualitative considerations that go beyond money.

Then again my dad used to travel every single week for years and that seemed to work for his disposition.

Do you like travel? Do you care about having weird schedules? Do you care about things like diet and fitness? Are you regimented enough to maintain your diet and fitness despite the challenges while on the road? Do you have an active social life? How long do you think you can stand being away from home before it wears on you? 

dizzean

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2017, 12:45:06 PM »
50% travel is a lot so that would be the biggest consideration from my point of view. When I first started my career, I really loved the travel because I didn't like my home state and it gave me a chance to check out other places. After I moved travel didn't hold as much appeal because I viewed it as too much of a disruption in my life. Unless you are a very regimented person, it's easy to get out of shape and gain a bunch of weight while on the road and if you have an active social life at home then you may feel that sense of missing out. Not saying that these are insurmountable challenges, but I wanted to make the point that there are qualitative considerations that go beyond money.

Then again my dad used to travel every single week for years and that seemed to work for his disposition.

Do you like travel? Do you care about having weird schedules? Do you care about things like diet and fitness? Are you regimented enough to maintain your diet and fitness despite the challenges while on the road? Do you have an active social life? How long do you think you can stand being away from home before it wears on you?

This is good advice!

They said it's up to 50% travel. The PM that I talked to there said there was 9 months where he was gone every other weekend but now hasn't travelled since October. It goes in swings I guess.

I'm already 50 lbs over weight and eat/drink like shit without much exercise. :/

Cali Nonya

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2017, 01:38:09 PM »
A traveling position really depends upon person disposition.  I have known people who have jobs like you describe who love them and do very well personally and financially, and other people where it was a train-wreck (usually personally).

Have you and your wife been in a long-distance relationship in the time you have been together?  If you have and it was all okay, that would be a big plus on the go-for-it side. 

One other consideration is how easy would it be to get back to a job like you have now if it doesn't pan out?  Do you feel your career prospects are flexible such that you could easily get back to where you are now (probably with a different employer)?

 

MsSindy

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2017, 02:01:17 PM »
I'm married with no kids and was in Management Consulting (MC).  Traveling was fun (for me) at first - eating out in restaurants and staying in nice hotels (Marriotts) - this was pre-911.  Hubby wasn't as thrilled, as all the house 'work' got saddled on him (he did learn to appreciate how much I did though!).  After a while, it totally grinds on you - you miss out on social things, you have no routine, you can make no long term plans, and you are always packing and unpacking and catching up on 'honey-do' things that you didn't do while you are away.  You put in way more than 40 hours because you're expected to travel PLUS put in 40+ hours with your client.  In MC, you pay your dues early, so you suck it up and do it and it typically leads to great positions and a great resume.

Some things to consider - where are you traveling to?  Do you wind up in cool cities or in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but work and go back to your empty, lonely hotel, eating dinner out of a styrofoam box?  Will you travel with anyone (more fun), or is it always solo?  Are you flying constantly (major pain), or is some of it by train/auto.  Do you stay in budget hotels with no amenities?  Also, red flag is that the PM was traveling over weekends??  This means you're working a lot of hours.  We had a strict M-T travel with F at home policy - not too bad.

On the plus side - I had excellent workout facilities in the hotel, got major CC points, and was able to fly my husband out to see me instead of flying home for the weekend.  I also got a generous fixed dollar per diem, so as long as I ate cheaply, I pocketed a few extra hundred per month.

Really think about the realities of the lifestyle and discuss it with your wife.  It could be a good plan to do for a couple of years if it gets you to a good bump in pay and allows you to capitalize on that in the future.  But don't sugar coat it, unless you really don't like to be at home with your wife, traveling is a grind.
If you're traveling that much, you won't be home for your kid/wife. 

caracarn

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Re: Looking for some career advice
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2017, 02:35:26 PM »
So my spin on this has some similarities.

My favorite phrase to people who envied me for my ability to travel for my job was, "It's fun, unless you're the one doing it".  Business travel is most cases is not enjoyable.  You are not going there to sight see, you are being sent there to work.  As such, they usually want you on the road as short as possible and in the client's office as much as possible, so I would leave the hotel early in the morning  and get to the facility, then spend a full day, go get some dinner and then spend more hours in the hotel finishing up all the other e-mails and work I had missed back at the office to then go to sleep and do it again.  I did 50% travel for a while and 25% travel and it can be managed, but it is not fun.

I've also worked for European companies, British and German ones, and it is crucial to understand that their expectations versus US expectations are vastly different.  You need to dig heavily into that before you take an offer or you may be in for some unpleasant surprises.  British companies are notoriously frugal (read cheap) and traveling on their dime is like the worst travel movie you've ever seen.    At times when we traveled together we were asked to share hotel rooms with colleagues.  Also are you not a W-2 employee?  The $7500 for health insurance is what throws me.  Are you a contractor of 1099 employee and they do not provide you health insurance through the company?  Do you have health insurance at your current employer?

I'm a certified PMP, so I get project management, and I'd say it's highly likely that a 50% travel PM is not much shy of 24/7, so you may be fooling yourself thinking you are getting away from that.  I work in IT as well, and my general statement to anyone who grumbles about the 24/7 and being in IT is that you got into the wrong field then.  It's a given and I'm now in executive management and I still have to deal with things at all hours of the night and I'd say I've got a pretty sweet position now, so this will not likely change for you regardless of what they are selling you to get you in the door.  I was just working a problem with my team that was quite hairy until 1:30 in the morning last week.

The lack of moving up is a legitimate problem if you aspire to higher roles.  That's always a trade off with one company to another.  I would caution you against advice to take this to move you up the salary ladder.  People tend to forget that the ladder is not infinite.  Your on the MMM forum, so if you're goal is FIRE in 5-10 years then it might not much matter, but if you are looking at a longer career, jumping into the 100-130 range you expected at 30 is going to create some problems for you in the future.  You end up pricing yourself out of opportunities.  I just went through that myself recently as I tried to get out of a toxic culture and my high salary created issues with 80% of the potential employers I spoke with and it was not much higher than your range.  Even though I told employer's I understood and was OK with lower pay, it was massively difficult to explain away.  Now I did not want to relocate, but even if I did, once you start getting above $120K your prospects for positions get very slim as to how many are out there to offer that pay.  If you can get one and keep one long enough to FIRE, it's great, but if things go south and you are making $150K and everything in your city pays $110K or less (which is about what a senior PM should expect in most markets outside of East Coast and CA) trying to convince people you are OK with market rate when you were getting more is a battle I'd not wish on anyone.

Finally, unlike an earlier poster who enjoyed the travel and had her hubby fly out from time to time because they had no kids, I did this with kids and you said they are in your near future.  That much travel with kids is a totally different animal.  I had a resentful spouse at times because I was heading out of town in the middle of a house full of sick kids, or some other drama.  I would not downplay the stress work travel creates at that level, especially being gone on the weekends if your spouse also works.  You now are taking away time you had together and with kids it may be the only time you all have to spend as a family.  That has an impact.  We tried the "honey come out and join me" and with kids it basically proved impossible.  Some employers even had events where spouses were invited and paid for to come out and we had to turn them down because wife had to stay at home with kids.  It was not the main reason we got divorced but I promise it did not help.

ETA:  Sorry I forgot this was a work at home position too.  I also did that for a time.  You need to make sure you have a place to work, and that your wife and your future kids understand during the day you are working.  This can be hard.   Also many people miss the interactions with colleague in the workplace, so again this is a "sounds wonderful" on paper, but the reality turns out to be vastly different for some. 

Also as an employer looking at your resume in the future, leaving after just six months at your position shows very clearly you have zero loyalty and that still plays a spot in hiring today.  After two years or so it's kind of par for the course in this day and age, but anything under that if I see a resume with someone that moves every year, and I have another candidate who did not?  The offer goes to the other candidate.  We put time and money into training these people and I do not have time to keep interviewing and training.  We've got work to do.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2017, 02:42:47 PM by caracarn »