Hey good friends of MMM, long time lurker here and looking for a bit of advice if you would be so kind. I'm a first generation college and my parents had me at a VERY young age, so I've had a few (AHM lots) of hard knocks over the years figuring this all out on my own. Back when I started graduate school and my eventual career this site had a great deal of influence on my current success. As for financial background, we aren't FI but we have FU money and we plan on slowly downshifting over the course of this decade. I also live in a prosperous city in the US and there are plenty of jobs available, although I work for a company in a different state.
I've been a working professional at the same company for 5 years. I'm a high performer and have received multiple promotions and make over a 100k a year now. For purposes of this post, let's define my current role and manager as A) and future role as B). As I've progressed through the years I've learned what I'm passionate about and good at and while working have taught myself a skillset for a career shift. There was a internal position over a year ago I applied for and ended up settling on doing that 50/50 with role A and role B while I trained into role B and got a feel for it. It's initially been great, but learning an entirely new career while executing the demands of role A has been rough recently. Role B transition was supposed to occur on April 1st provided the financial details were approved at B), and team at Role A) has known this for 6 months and has had time to plan. I will add that I'm doing very well at Role B and have even introduced a number of innovations that the team has been thrilled about.
So fast forward to yesterday (Friday). On Monday, I'm supposed to meet with manager A and B and discuss the transition plan. Manager A so far has been supportive and kept me on shorter duration projects so the transition can go smoothly. Manager A contacts me yesterday, the very business day before we discuss this transition, and changes the tune and says they might not be able to let me go since apparently a big business critical (ahm project that will make them look good) has popped up and now they need 'technical resources' and can't afford to lose me until they find a replacement. Which will likely take up to 6 months at least, but she kept the end date undefined. Needless to say I was quite furious but kept my composure but didn't hide the fact I was incredibly disappointed.
Now I have no idea what Manager B is going to say. Manager B might very well try to be complicit with her to keep the peace, and if that's the case, I think I have less pull here. However either way, I think it's too much to ask someone to keep doing two jobs for longer than the 6 months agreement with no end date in sight. To add to the picture the team at Role A can be toxic and the work is very difficult and stressful - and I hate the type of work they have me do. I just don't know the best option here. Obviously I can't agree to an undefined date for a backfill as that's just messy and they will be taking advantage of me for a good chunk of 2021. At best I think I was going to offer an extension to the original agreement of May 1st, but that feels bad too because it's an awful idea to start a major project that will go well into 2022 on Role A if I'm just going to leave in another month. I could easily see this leading to I can't transition at all. I think at a minimum I'm going to say that this is the date agreed upon and I cannot continue to do two roles for any longer, and it's not fair to ask me to do so.
To top it off, role B is quite a shift and job code change so I might actually take a pay hit. Which is fine, it actually has more $$ potential, and I'd like what I'm doing more and will have more marketable skills for the future. I'm a little concerned that with half a years experience in the new role it would be rough to find something equivalent around here if I left . If they decide to change the job code in the fiscal year AND continue doing the old role I might as well just quit right there, which I'm still thinking of doing if they don't give a defined end date. I imagine manager B isn't going to be for a long transition. If for some reason they can't come to an agreement and I have go back to role A full time I'd start looking for a job immediately. This isn't the first time I've been jerked around at this company, and I'm about at wits end. Any tips going into this meeting? It's hard to plan because I have no idea what manager B is thinking. I do have walk away power here and with my wife working and our stash we could be quite fine for some time, although I'd hate to just sit around my house pumping out applications and starting a new job in the covid era.