Job Advice

[melchoir]

I'm currently employed, working in IT. The company I work for recently had a company wide layoff, letting 16-22 (unconfirmed total) people go from our SBU. 2 IT people were part of this "right sizing".

Honestly, from a top level support perspective the writing has been on the wall for them to be looking towards cutting us for awhile, but they always maintain (as expected) that they have no plans to further reduce any IT staff, as they understand how difficult it is to get another person after headcount is initially reduced. Also, for the past 4 years annual raises have been rough 1-1.5%, with last year no one getting any raises due to the state of the economy. It looks no better this year.

Anyway, I've recently been offered a new position for a growing company. The position pays slightly more (12.5%) but it's for a lower level position. (Think network admin compared to desktop support). I've asked about advancement opportunities, but was told that while my salary would continue to grow within my new position, my responsibilities would likely stay the same for the foreseeable future.

I'm torn. Stability + more money is nice, but I'm young, and building experience, I'd hate to take a step backwards in my career path.

(I've been working in IT since 2002, I've been a "Shop/Systems Technician, Desktop support, and Systems Engineer(Net Admin + infrastructure design/support))

 

[Blieb]

Right now, for me ... stability > *

I'd take the change and work on my own thing or ... keep lookin while working ...

OR ... set a timeline of like 2 years and see how it goes?

 

[Blieb]

I guess the other question is how many people are even at your current place ...

 

[melchoir]

Originally posted by: Blieb
I guess the other question is how many people are even at your current place ...

As far as support? We have a helpdesk team for T1-2, dispatching + Desktop level support.
This team had 6 techs and a supervisor, we're now at 4 techs + supervisor.

For upper level, we have 2 LAN Administrators for AD permissions/GPOs, etc and we had 2 Systems Engineers. Now I'm the only SE left, while my counterpart was made supervisor over Engineering + LAN Admin, and Telecom was also placed under him. (2 additional staff)

We also have a development team and a SQA team, but those aren't really support personnel.

The bigger problem is that our SBU was merged with 2 other SBUs, and sold as a new business. This new business has outsourced it's GO IT operations for the new corporate HQ, alongside both other SBUs. We're the only SBU left with our own IT staff, but to be fair, this is how things have always ran. The other SBUs looked to corporate for IT support in the past while we've always had our own staff due to the different nature of our business compared to their's.

 

[Injury]

Let's step back and ask yourself about your current job. If you were truly happy about the company you wouldn't even be considering a new job, right? The raises have been sub-par but a lot of the country is in the same boat. You can't really blame your company for not being able to give you more and if money was the only issue you really had then you wouldn't have needed to ask yourself which is the better choice if one is offering more money. You could come in tomorrow to find your job gone but you can't be certain (Tomorrow IS a Friday. ) Do you feel challenged at this job? What are the advancement opportunities like at the current job?


Now let's move on to the new company. You really can't speculate too much about what you don't know, but if someone says to me that my responsibilities would be the same for the foreseeable future I wouldn't take that as a hint that it would be dead-end. If they needed someone for a higher position now they'd be hiring for that position, not the one below it. Maybe you get in there and totally blow them away and they want to make a position for you. Maybe you get in there and they don't like you and when the position opens up you get shafted on it time and time again. Who knows. The point is, if the only thing holding you back is having a title/position that is less interesting then you aren't looking far enough or you're selling yourself short on what they might let you dabble in once they start trusting you.


I am curious to know the questions about the first job, but just by reading what you've said so far then the new job is what I'd go for.

 

[Vehemence]

Start slangin now bro

 

[melchoir]

Originally posted by: Injury
Let's step back and ask yourself about your current job. If you were truly happy about the company you wouldn't even be considering a new job, right? The raises have been sub-par but a lot of the country is in the same boat. You can't really blame your company for not being able to give you more and if money was the only issue you really had then you wouldn't have needed to ask yourself which is the better choice if one is offering more money. You could come in tomorrow to find your job gone but you can't be certain (Tomorrow IS a Friday. ) Do you feel challenged at this job? What are the advancement opportunities like at the current job?


Now let's move on to the new company. You really can't speculate too much about what you don't know, but if someone says to me that my responsibilities would be the same for the foreseeable future I wouldn't take that as a hint that it would be dead-end. If they needed someone for a higher position now they'd be hiring for that position, not the one below it. Maybe you get in there and totally blow them away and they want to make a position for you. Maybe you get in there and they don't like you and when the position opens up you get shafted on it time and time again. Who knows. The point is, if the only thing holding you back is having a title/position that is less interesting then you aren't looking far enough or you're selling yourself short on what they might let you dabble in once they start trusting you.


I am curious to know the questions about the first job, but just by reading what you've said so far then the new job is what I'd go for.

It's not all about the money, as I originally stated. I'm currently underpaid for my position by a substantial amount, but was willing to take it for the additional experience that I would receive. As far as challenges go, I am far from challenged at my current position, a lot of things changed shortly after I took this position and what it originally was, has changed so drastically that it's almost not even the same position.

We haven't been given money for upgrading systems in quite awhile, and a lot of what we used to manage has been taken over by the corporate office I spoke of in my first post. I don't feel that I will be growing any further in my current position, but am hesitant to leave it for a "backwards" step. As I don't know if when I begin searching for another Engineer/Admin job if coming from another DST type position will be more difficult than searching from my current role.

As far as looking hard enough, believe me, I have. I've exhausted all internet based (gov/craigslist/careerbuilder/dice/monster etc...) job sites. This is a bad area in general for upper end IT jobs, there just isn't many at all to begin with. I'm convinced I'll have to move to obtain another Engineer/Admin role at this point.