What’s in a Job?

2019 has been an inter­est­ing year for me job-wise. I start­ed the year at one com­pa­ny, left after 6 months for anoth­er com­pa­ny, and am now get­ting seri­ous­ly recruit­ed for yet anoth­er com­pa­ny after only 3 months! There are a few dif­fer­ent fac­tors in play I’m going to talk about.

DC is a Different Beast

Things don’t work around here like I’m used to. My first com­pa­ny I stayed at 5 years.….. because it was the only glob­al com­pa­ny where it was pos­si­ble to have a career at in a 200 mile radius. There weren’t a whole lot of options in the area so of course I stayed there. It was a pret­ty good com­pa­ny to work for over­all but it did have some flaws. They did pay very good mon­ey for the area, so I’m real­ly hap­py I hoard­ed a lot of the salary they gave me.

Now that I’m in the DMV metro area (that’s DC-Mary­land-VA, not the Dept of Motor Vehi­cles), the game is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. I was told it was but see­ing is believ­ing and I am see­ing it for myself. After I left my first job this year, I turned off my avail­abil­i­ty on LinkedIn and can­celed my pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion because I was­n’t look­ing any­more. Well, that did­n’t deter some recruiters. I got an email from a man­ag­er 2 weeks after I start­ed my new job! If they did­n’t care I just start­ed a job, I sure as heck don’t mind. That job did­n’t pan out thanks to some inter­nal polit­i­cal games going on, but oth­er recruiters have reached out to me since.

Some are easy to turn down. A help desk posi­tion at Ft. Belvoir that only pays $20/hr? No thank you. A Sr. Lin­ux Admin­is­tra­tor posi­tion? Um… no, I only have 18 months expe­ri­ence from 4 years ago.…

Oth­ers.… are not so easy to turn down. I had a man­ag­er mes­sage me on LinkedIn about a posi­tion they’re try­ing to fill and I’m seri­ous­ly mulling tak­ing the posi­tion if I make it past the inter­views. Why am I so will­ing to leave my new company?

3 months in at the current job

I’m 3 months in at the newest com­pa­ny and I don’t know if this gig is going to last. There are 4 of us on the team in my build­ing and not enough work for all of us. There is a lot of down time to fill. Almost imme­di­ate­ly after I start­ed, my team start­ed telling me of all the orga­ni­za­tion­al changes that have been made in the last year. A lot of peo­ple were let go and teams con­sol­i­dat­ed. They told me it’s a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty we merge with the desk­top sup­port team and are in charge of sup­port­ing every user in the build­ing, not just the exec­u­tives like I am now.

I love sup­port­ing exec­u­tives. Most of them real­ly appre­ci­ate the work we do and treat us well. Since we start a lot of their meet­ings, we also have access to some of the catered meals they get which real­ly helps my food bud­get. I would prob­a­bly be ok sup­port­ing the entire build­ing if they left our teams at their cur­rent head­count, but rumor has it they’ll use the merge as an excuse to cut some peo­ple out. As the newest per­son on both teams, this leaves me in a pre­car­i­ous long term position.

I also am not the biggest fan of the com­pen­sa­tion struc­ture. I took a $5k/yr pay cut to come to the com­pa­ny after I tried and failed to nego­ti­ate for more. They told me this was the ceil­ing for the team, and I’ve since ver­i­fied that with my cowork­ers. (One is get­ting paid a full $9k/yr less than me, even!!) I did­n’t like it, but I liked what I was doing even less at the old job so I took it.

New job highs

This posi­tion at the new com­pa­ny looks like it would be a great fit for them and me. The posi­tion is IT Sup­port at its heart, with some extra flair on top of that. (No, not actu­al pieces of flair!). I think it would be a chal­lenge for me to take on the new duties of asset man­age­ment, onboard­ing new peo­ple and sup­port­ing a Mac-heavy envi­ron­ment. This would allow me to grow and poten­tial­ly open up new avenues of advance­ment, some­thing that’s lack­ing in the Exec­u­tive Sup­port world if you want to stay in Exec­u­tive Support.

The pay is also much bet­ter. Ten­ta­tive num­bers before an offi­cial offer has been extend­ed look like an $11k/yr jump in base pay, an annu­al bonus, and RSU’s. In the end, that’s about a 33% jump in pay, which is sore­ly need­ed in this HCOL area. While I absolute­ly love my apart­ment, it’s undoubt­ed­ly expen­sive on my cur­rent budget.

The perks are also bet­ter. I’d get to wear what­ev­er I want to the office which does make a huge dif­fer­ence to this Mil­len­ni­al. The office gets catered meals Mon­day — Wednes­day — Fri­day so I’d con­tin­ue to get a lot of free food.

The new com­pa­ny is also head­quar­tered in San Fran­sis­co so I’d poten­tial­ly get to trav­el to the Bay Area and oth­er places for events. I do love to trav­el and I love to trav­el even more on some­one else’s dime.

New job lows

While I like trav­el­ing to San Fran­sis­co, I don’t think I want to live there. I don’t think I’d mind liv­ing there, but if I can bare­ly han­dle liv­ing in DC on a tight bud­get, I would def­i­nite­ly strug­gle to live in super HCOL Bay Area. I could def­i­nite­ly kiss hav­ing my own place good­bye which would make me sad. As this office in DC is a satel­lite office, advance­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the com­pa­ny would prob­a­bly be lim­it­ed here. Who knows though, the com­pa­ny is grow­ing quick­ly and I might be able to cre­ate my own niche as time goes on.

Speak­ing of the office here in DC.…… when I say it’s in DC, I mean it’s in DC busi­ness dis­trict prop­er. Savvy read­ers will note I just moved 20 miles out­side DC for my cur­rent job, which means the com­mute would go back to being a pain. I’m not too far from the end of a Metro line that would take me straight there, so I would­n’t have to dri­ve into DC and deal with the awful traf­fic, tolls, and park­ing. So that’s nice, I guess!

The oth­er not great aspect of this job is their retire­ment plan. At 2000 employ­ees, they’re a rel­a­tive­ly small com­pa­ny. They do have a 401k avail­able, but it has no match. That means of my $11k base salary raise, $5k would imme­di­ate­ly be tak­en up by los­ing my com­pa­ny match in my 401k which is a bit of a bum­mer. I’m con­sid­er­ing ask­ing for more of a raise to make up for that fact, as I was unaware of the no-match sta­tus when I came up with a num­ber. When I inquired about the ben­e­fits, they did say they’re offer­ing more in RSU’s right now as opposed to a match as they want the employ­ees to share in the growth of the com­pa­ny. It’s rea­son­able, just not what I’m used to as some­one that’s only worked for com­pa­nies that are huge and have been around for a long time. Anoth­er area to grow in!

Final thoughts

I don’t see this cur­rent job work­ing out in the long term, so I’m open to con­sid­er­ing offers as they come in. I’m def­i­nite­ly not in the active job search stage espe­cial­ly as I’ve only paid 2 out of the 12 months on my lease. This new posi­tion is absolute­ly worth con­sid­er­ing! It’s a mixed bag of good and not so good, but I think the good out­weighs the not so good.

Keep your fin­gers crossed for me — it’s been 10 days since I inter­viewed so I hope I hear back from them soon!

Thanks for read­ing! How do you like your cur­rent job? Would you change jobs if you were me?