Should I become a supervisor or stay technical? What all should I weigh?

[johndoe]

(Sorry if this feels rambling,  but im looking to think of aspects I may be missing) Ive been in the same job title for >13 years since graduating college, and generally get great satisfaction out of it.  It's in public sector (overtime is rare), and they've recently implemented a new pay structure that incentivizes supervisory roles.  Of the >1,000 employees, I'm the expert in one particular technical field, so my job title doesn't really reflect my true impact (a job title for this task doesn't really exist and I'm lumped in with a more generic group).  Getting a new job title invented is thought to be very unlikely, but I'm asking about that, or categorizing me as something else.  My supervisors know I'm a great employee, but they claim to have no input on salaries.  Basically I feel "left behind" with this new pay structure: I used to be about $5k behind supervisors but now it's more like $15k.  (I've had this previous debate with myself, but $5k was easier to turn down than $15k is now)  There is now an opening in a supervisory role (that doesn't come open often) and I'm weighing staying or applying.  I make about $65k , which has been enough for me over the last few years but seeing coworkers get big raises has made me feel insulted.  If I went to public side I'd be shocked if I couldn't double my salary.  We get (non COLA) raises so rarely that this may be the only chance I have to get one.  Our salaries aren't determined at all by performance and for most experience doesn't matter either. 

We get a pension, and I expect to make something like 50% of my end salary from retirement (when I'm at least 52) til my lights go out.  So this raise would be something like $7.5k annually in retirement.  My current annual spending is around $15k.  My invested net worth is around $300k, so I'm probably already "coastFI"

Current job: great boss, I get to prioritize how I spend time, I enjoy the problem-solving.  A downside is that it's not in same department as some of the "boots on the ground" operations - sometimes substandard decisions are made and we're not consulted.

Potential job: it's in this operational department that has been a revolving door for years, the boss is thought to be set in his ways and rumored to have anger issues (I'd guess >10 years til his retirement).  I'd probably be able to influence decisions more but the people I'd supervise haven't demonstrated much interest or passion for the work.  Communication with them in past has been struggle but perhaps that's because "you're in department x therefore I don't have to do what you ask".

Overall it's hard to leave my current setup but getting a raise of my annual spending is attractive.  I do think "cleaning up " this department would be a worthy goal for taxpayers' benefit, but am sure it won't be easy.  I've never supervised and am used to relying on myself for quality work.  What do you think? What am I forgetting?

[FIRE@50]

My opinion is that making 65k with 13yrs of experience is insulting and even 80k(with your possible promotion) isn't enough. I would recommend that you look for a new place to work.

[Sibley]

Technical and supervision are completely different jobs. Do you want the job of supervisor?

Why don't you look at other jobs? You don't have to accept an offer if you don't want.

[lifeisshort123]

Are you vested in the pension now?

If so, why not go the public side for a few years?

the supervisory role, as you describe it sounds terrible.  I would not recommend that direction.

[JamBaguettes]

Taking a 15k raise will shorten your time to full FI by around a year (+/-). I’m making a lot of assumptions including 7% annual return, 25k annual spend in retirement (vs 15k now- wow!!), not factoring in pension, and 30% tax on income (possibly very wrong!).

Given your current low expenses and distance from pension eligibility, I would discount effects of a raise on your pension. $7500 annually is not nothing but it sounds like pension and current savings rate will greatly exceed supporting an inflated version of your current lifestyle, especially if you make it to pension eligibility. 

What are your goals (financial, professional, life…)? If you take the job and it’s a bad fit, what other options do you have? If increased salary and professional growth are interests, absolutely consider private sector/leaving your pension.

[zolotiyeruki]

All the previous comments are spot-on.  I'm only here to reiterate:

1) You are clearly and severely underpaid for your level of experience.
2) Taking a supervisor position is a totally different job.
3) A person's job performance is strongly correlated not just to their capability, but also their level of enjoyment.  If you take the supervisor position and it turns into a slog, it'll not only affect your happiness, but your performance as well.
4) You need A job, but you don't need THIS job.  Polish up your resume and start interviewing.
5) Management and HR occasionally need a wakeup call, and often won't notice a problem (or will ignore it) as long as possible.

[reeshau]

Ive been in the same job title for >13 years since graduating college, and generally get great satisfaction out of it. 

Run, run from there!

You get great job satisfaction from your technical role.  Kiss that goodbye as a supervisor.  More office politics.  More peoples' problems.  Looks like, a bad boss.  (People don't leave bad organizations; they leave bad bosses) And less--much less--technical work.  If you're lucky.  If not, then either your own pride of workmanship or a gap left by your leaving will heap that on you, too.

People take roles in the public sector, in large part, for the security: less likely to be laid off, and working toward a pension at the end of the career.  But you are pursuing FIRE, which in many ways is the opposite:  using your wits to maximize your wealth, to allow you the freedom to do anything, as soon as possible.  Your living costs, and the fact that you wrote this post, suggest you are the latter.  But I suppose you really need to decide.

If you can double your money, doing a job you get great satisfaction from, then you are stupid every day you don't go for that.

[Greystache]

I was in the same position early in my career. I worked in an engineering department and was offered a supervisor position in a production department. It was more pay and was a little outside my comfort zone. I took the job and was miserable. I tried to make it work for over a year, but I had to admit that I had made a terrible mistake. I was much better at working with things than people. Fortunately I was able to get back to the engineering side of the house without taking a pay cut.  Even though it turned out to be a horrible mistake for me, I'm proud that I took the chance and stretched my comfort zone. At least then I knew for sure that supervision was not for me and I never had to wonder what if.

[use2betrix]

I have bounced between management and technical roles. I love the technical aspects, but also love the general additional autonomy that being a manager provides as well as being involved in ‘everything.’ While I still really get into the weeds sometimes (spent 10 hours over the weekend, on OT pay fortunately, digging into isometrics, commodity catalogs, engineering standards, deviations, and addenda’s for a technical problem on a project) I generally am able to have my hands a little bit into nearly everything. I have a built an incredibly diverse team to tackle every level of technical issue.

Of course, then you also deal with the people issue. I had a good contractor put in his 2 week notice today for a longer term position (understandable, and I couldn’t guarantee him job security past the end of the year). I then had to hear about his justifications for 20 minutes, and he clearly wanted me to reassure him he could be here longer, which I couldn’t.. I probably could go out on a limb, but after the amount of times I had gone to bat for him to build his reputation amongst the project (also a management responsibility), I didn’t owe him any favors..

Regardless of all the above - I agree with the others that your description of the supervisory role sounds terrible and you also sound severely underpaid.

[secondcor521]

Only take the supervisor role if you like it and if you think you'll be good at it.

I wouldn't.  The other second level boss, assuming they've been there for a while, either doesn't know how to fix things or doesn't want them fixed.  You coming in and trying to fix things from below will end badly for you.

I wonder offhand if the position is open under the other boss because nobody wants to work for him and/or the person for whom the job was created either left or turned it down.  (I worked as an engineering manager for five years.  The first three years were for a great boss and I loved it.  The last two years were for a lousy boss and I FIREd after unsuccessfully trying to change things from below.)

I don't necessarily agree that you're underpaid.  You might be.  But it depends on where you live, what kind of industry, and what kind of technical work you're doing.

If I were you, I'd focus on trying to solve the medium-sized problems in your current job:  Your area not being consulted when they should be, and your job title / pay structure in your current role.  As far as the second problem goes, they probably figure you're not going to leave.

If you polish off your resume and go do some informational interviews in the private sector, or other public roles that are similar that you feel qualified for, that might both (a) help you determine if you're underpaid, and (b) give you negotiating leverage with your supervisors to adjust your title and salary.

[johndoe]

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts so far.  I've got more thinking to do!

Regarding going private: the main reason I've never seriously thought about that is the limit it would have on the type / access of work I'd do.  Without getting too specific, working for the public agency gives me more opportunities to get close to the problems - a consultant only gets to work on a fraction of the jobs and doesn't have the same local impact that public employees do.  I am in a L/MCOL area, and I just randomly threw out the "double" salary but I can certainly live on $65k ... perhaps it's more mental at this point about feeling appreciated.  The trouble seems to be that any salary change must be done at the very top of the org, where exceptions just don't seem to be made.

I am vested.  I've also always assumed I'll stay until full retirement due to the pension / medical benefits but in honesty I don't know how they stack up against others (currently in the HDHP I pay $50/month, non-Medicare retirees pay $300/month, Medicare retirees pay $150/month).

[Silrossi46]

@johndoe I was actually in your exact position some years ago.  I am public sector IT.  I am in year 29 and am currently 52.  Back when I had this option I pulled the trigger and went the supervisory route and took the bump.  I did it for the same reasons in that I knew I was staying till the pension kicked in for life and the medical also which I get here premium free after retirement.  The bump for me led to more bumps and also to the the current position that I have which is CTO.  Had I not done it I would have just leveraged the cola steps and probably been at half my current salary (currently almost 200k). I will get 60% of that in retirement for life.

One thing you really need to consider is that supervising/management is not for everyone.  Often times it is assumed that if you were stellar in your technical role it should be automatic that supervising is your next path.  That is the furthest from the case. Managing people is hard so please consider that! 

[Sibley]

If you decide to take the supervisory role, or even need some extra insight, askamanager.org is an excellent resource for all things work. Including how to be a a good manager.

[six-car-habit]

  We had an employee go off on a rant verbally on two co-workers the other night.  The loud employee is known to be competent / safe worker technically speaking.  This time it ended with the loudmouth pushing and taking a swing, at the object of his venom.  A coworker got between them and stopped the assault. This is in a gov't office setting. They have us take 'workplace violence' computer courses annually. 

   Management response has been lacking. The incident wasn't pushed up the chain for 2 days.  Loudmouth got put on admin leave. 
  It's rumored the supervisor sat in the next office hearing the yelling for 10+ minutes and did nothing.  Was he hoping it would resolve itself ?  Did he say nothing afterwards because the loudmouth is otherwise a productive employee [ per metrics ] ? 
    The issue was over food wrappers being left in a shared vehicle...

  Management doesn't want to talk about the incident while the 'investigation' is ongoing.
 
  Personally i've decided i will not work under the direct supervision of the lackadaisacal shift leader.  If he was willing to let this pass, who knows what else he'd overlook ?   I've got a job that entails physical risks, and if the supervisor might not shut down the job where i have a safety concern, that he won't bother to get out of the office and look at.... no thanks !

   Take the supervisor job and you could get stuck in this scenario.

[turketron]

If you decide to take the supervisory role, or even need some extra insight, askamanager.org is an excellent resource for all things work. Including how to be a a good manager.

As an individual contributor who knows that I very much never want to be a manager, askamanager.org is an amazing site in general.

[bryan995]

I would at the very least, take 3 months and look for other companies/jobs/opportunities  - whether private or public. This is the only way to discover your true market rate. I wouldn’t let a modest pension keep you from moving private. Often you can make 1,2,3,5,10x more in a private company :)

My opinion - IC > Manager until you get to the VP+ level.
Also in times of recession, it’s the middle managers that are more at risk, than the folks doing the actual work :)

[FLBiker]

Personally, I'd be happy taking less money for a job I liked better.  I have definitely not gone for some promotions over the years for exactly that reason.

[Just Joe]

Personally, I'd be happy taking less money for a job I liked better.  I have definitely not gone for some promotions over the years for exactly that reason.

Same. With DW and my salaries we make more than we need. We have a very good work/life balance so we ignore the fact that we could be making more money (stress) elsewhere. 

I was in the very same position a couple of years ago. Decided I didn't want my director's job. The income bump wasn't enough for the aggravation. DW and my combined salaries exceed that of several of our supervisors' who are single income families. We are modest spenders.

We see more manager turnover than in the technical folks doing the real work first hand. Sometimes they leave for more money, sometimes they fall out of favor and are encouraged to move along.

[Sanitary Stache]

Is your position part of a union negotiated contract? If it is there should be contractual methods for increasing pay. This is usually a lot of work for supervisors and HR, but you can request it.

65K in a technical role after 13 years seems wrong to me.  I am in the highest non-supervisory position in my government organization and I would be at 80K if I had been here 13 years (I am at 62K after 5 years with some interruption).  My contract is negotiated by a union and there are set pay grades and steps along with COLA adjustments. The contract, and pay grade rates, are negotiated every 2 or 3 years, usually with increases to the schedules.  My managers could ask the leadership to increase my step as a reward/promotion. They could ask to change my position to a higher pay grade.  They could nominate me for bonuses. 

I am also considering taking a supervisor position.  I haven't wanted to in the past because the supervisor job seemed too big at supervising 9 technical staff and building several programs.  Now the position I didn't want has grown, if I had taken it I could be in a position for another promotion to program manager and in line for upper level leadership in the agency (but I probably would have been miserable and washed out or at least not in line for that next promotion).  So the position now is to supervise 4 engineers and I am thinking I can do that job.

I am thinking I can do that job because there is now a complete management structure with good people and I think I might like keeping track of people more than projects.

The situation you describe sounds like the environment that existed in my job a few years ago.  The long time program manager was toxic and it brought down everyone in the organization.  I made a switch to work directly under him and ended up leaving the organization. I only came back after he was ousted.  Have you considered whether you complaints about the operational section don't stem from this manager?  Do you really want to trade a job you can stand for a shit job just for a small increase in pay?

When I left public sector work for private sector is was mostly about eliminating the commute, but it also came with that 15k pay increase (only 130% of public sector).  I found that the 15k was not enough to make up for the switch from public to private.  This was mostly because of the large amount of unpaid time that came with the private sector job.  Your guess at 200% salary increase in private sector may be accurate, especially since you are under paid in the public sector.  I would suggest you calculate your private sector worth based on the 80K you should be making now and not the 65k. 200% of 65k = 130,000.  150% of 80K = 120,000.  I won't take a private sector job for less than 150% of what I am making in the public sector.

Similarly, I wouldn't take the supervisor position unless it was set up for you to succeed.  This seems like too many things are stacked against you - an organization that refuses to recognize your value, a toxic manager, a troubled program.  Call the supervisors on their B.S. and request a raise in writing.  Contact your HR department and ask about every scenario that exists for the organization can increase your pay, then request it in writing repeatedly.