Torn in making a career decision - 8/6 Update

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Wait, forget the startup.

Not necessarily. My raises have totalled 40% in the last three years.

Mine have totalled about 1% and then 1% (after the 20% I got from actually changing jobs). It's true that the best way to get more money in almost all cases is a change of job. I don't know why employers don't realize this, but it's hard to assess the value of an existing employee, so I suppose that's why.

I played that game in my last job. Two trend-breaking 10%+ annual raises and then a 20%+ competitive retention raise after I dropped a potential job offer on my manager's desk. The catch, the first raise I was brought in salaried lower than everyone else, including temps :Q and they needed to fix that once various client contracts changed. Second one was because I changed roles in the company moving up. Third (the competitive raise) was because I was severely undervalued in my position compared to others in the newly merged company, and even after the raise I was still making about 20% less than others.

I hate that game, because you're at the mercy of the company which doesn't give a damn about you.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Here's the situation, since no one ever reads these things, I'll just go into cliffs mode.

1. Started exploring new job opportunities in my career recently (Software dev)
2. Getting a good amount of interest at a level I didn't expect (Sr. Dev)
3. Interviewed with a few places, have a few more coming, surprised with the salary ranges (no firm offers yet, generally 50% more than what I currently make)
4. Came across an interesting listing on Monster, sent my resume, got a reply asking for a phone interview the next day.
5. Things went well, very well, but it's for a brand new startup which isn't going to offer more than what I make now, and wants to move quickly.

Basically, I'm torn between moving on the startup, or waiting for an established company that's going to offer me a better salary. I've been struggling to make it financially for the last 10 years between student loans, car payments, family and rent. I want to do the right thing. I'm at a point now where I do a little better than breaking even. A stable 50% better salary now basically wipes all my debt within the next two years, and makes life more comfortable. The startup doesn't quite offer that out of the box, but in a couple years, if it goes well in a couple years I could be far better off than just a 50% raise.

Yes, I know it's my decision to make. But this is a damn hard one. This would be a big move for my career if it works out. But I don't know if it's a safe bet to risk it.

since u need $, go w/the established company.

since the dot-com meltdown, you dont make $ off startups anymore. no more mega $$$ ipo's.

and if the startup gets bought out, the owners make zillions, while the workers (ie: you) get a few thousand.

<---------- been there. company got bought out. owner make $1B (yes BILLION!), us worker bee's got 25% salary bonus in the form of new company's stock

grrrrr...

 

[rgwalt]

Originally posted by: JDub02
Depends on what your situation is ... sounds like you're at a place where having a nice steady income with some job security is a good thing. I'd stick with the bigger companies.

Unless you're really set on the startup and your family will back you up if things go in the crapper.

If the added money doesn't materialize with the start up, or the / start up simply fails, you have to consider what your exit strategy is. If you are barely scrapping by right now and don't have savings put together to ride out a rough patch (think 3 to 6 months of potential unemployment to find a new job), is that an acceptable situation? What would happen if you could not afford to pay student loans, rent/mortgage, or car loans? If you can't form a fall back plan, then the potential reward probably outweighs the risk of losing your home, car, etc.

With great reward comes great risk. If you were a few years out of school w/o much debt or a family, then I would tell you to take a chance on the start up. It could be very lucrative. However, the added responsibility in your life requires a certain amount of added stability. If I were in your shoes, I would try to put off any decision about the startup until you know if there are other options with large, more stable companies. I would consider the startup a viable option, but when thinking about a job change you owe it to yourself to maximize your choices. Do what is best for you and your family both now and looking forward into the future.

Best of luck!

R

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Wait, forget the startup.

Not necessarily. My raises have totaled 40% in the last three years.

Mine have totaled about 1% and then 1% (after the 20% I got from actually changing jobs).

It's true that the best way to get more money in almost all cases is a change of job.

I don't know why employers don't realize this, but it's hard to assess the value of an existing employee, so I suppose that's why.

Existing employees used to at least get a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) at the end of each year.

That has stopped for at least the last decade. There is NO excuse for that.

You can guarantee that the business has assessed any increase in costs of doing business other than paying staff and have raised prices accordingly.

Does that seem right?

Essentially Americans have accepted getting pay decreases but expected to put out more work and more time for less pay.

The entire system has gone ass backwards.

 

[slsmnaz]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Wait, forget the startup.

Not necessarily. My raises have totaled 40% in the last three years.

Mine have totaled about 1% and then 1% (after the 20% I got from actually changing jobs).

It's true that the best way to get more money in almost all cases is a change of job.

I don't know why employers don't realize this, but it's hard to assess the value of an existing employee, so I suppose that's why.

Existing employees used to at least get a COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) at the end of each year.

That has stopped for at least the last decade. There is NO excuse for that.

You can guarantee that the business has assessed any increase in costs of doing business other than paying staff and have raised prices accordingly.

Does that seem right?

Essentially Americans have accepted getting pay decreases but expected to put out more work and more time for less pay.

The entire system has gone ass backwards.

and again you just jump into a thread and generalize. Your view on the world rarely matches anything actually happening in it

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: JEDI

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Here's the situation, since no one ever reads these things, I'll just go into cliffs mode.

1. Started exploring new job opportunities in my career recently (Software dev)
2. Getting a good amount of interest at a level I didn't expect (Sr. Dev)
3. Interviewed with a few places, have a few more coming, surprised with the salary ranges (no firm offers yet, generally 50% more than what I currently make)
4. Came across an interesting listing on Monster, sent my resume, got a reply asking for a phone interview the next day.
5. Things went well, very well, but it's for a brand new startup which isn't going to offer more than what I make now, and wants to move quickly.

Basically, I'm torn between moving on the startup, or waiting for an established company that's going to offer me a better salary. I've been struggling to make it financially for the last 10 years between student loans, car payments, family and rent. I want to do the right thing. I'm at a point now where I do a little better than breaking even. A stable 50% better salary now basically wipes all my debt within the next two years, and makes life more comfortable. The startup doesn't quite offer that out of the box, but in a couple years, if it goes well in a couple years I could be far better off than just a 50% raise.

Yes, I know it's my decision to make. But this is a damn hard one. This would be a big move for my career if it works out. But I don't know if it's a safe bet to risk it.

since u need $, go w/the established company.

since the dot-com meltdown, you dont make $ off startups anymore. no more mega $$$ ipo's.

and if the startup gets bought out, the owners make zillions, while the workers (ie: you) get a few thousand.

<---------- been there. company got bought out. owner make $1B (yes BILLION!), us worker bee's got 25% salary bonus in the form of new company's stock

grrrrr...

This is not true.

You have to assume that the owners, the people that put the blood, sweat, money, tears, etc. into it will make out the most. This is reasonable.

Let's also not assume that all start-ups are looking to achieve Google status or something like happened in the dot-com meltdown. Why are you assuming that all start-ups are somehow dot-com related? Companies start every single day, and many are very successful.

The software industry is bustling, and has been for quite some time. Talented people can make out very well, and if the cards are played right there's no reason you can't get ownership in a start-up. It's ultimately your fault for taking a position where you had no stake in the company and its success.

Some industries that are hot right now:

1) Accounting/auditing. Federal regulation is still rippling through accounting firms. This has kept people employed for years since Sarbanes Oxley.
2) Medical billing, collections, etc. HIPAA regulations have changed, requiring almost every medical billing company to change their software in order to conform. This is a gold mine.
3) Business intelligence services. Huge, huge market. I'm not going to give examples, because this is the market we're hitting right now.

Those three alone are keeping some start-ups afloat. I could give you about a dozen examples in the Atlanta area alone.

The point is, not all start-ups are looking to achieve a few billion. My cousin, a talented software developer, just sold his company along with his partners a few months ago. He made out well enough to retire. This is the kind of start-up success that happens, comparatively, all the time. Forget about an IPO. Almost no one achieves such success; however, millions of Americans achieve a level of success that isn't sexy enough to make headlines, but they achieve financial freedom.

The final point of my little rant here: OP, don't sell yourself short or the opportunity. No one likes to take risk, but those that do get the gain. Take the risk (which to me seems like very little risk; if it fails, get a new job; the only job security there is in software anyway is your ability to get another one), get the experience, meet motivated people that are moving up, build your network and capitalize.

imo

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: JEDI

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Here's the situation, since no one ever reads these things, I'll just go into cliffs mode.

1. Started exploring new job opportunities in my career recently (Software dev)
2. Getting a good amount of interest at a level I didn't expect (Sr. Dev)
3. Interviewed with a few places, have a few more coming, surprised with the salary ranges (no firm offers yet, generally 50% more than what I currently make)
4. Came across an interesting listing on Monster, sent my resume, got a reply asking for a phone interview the next day.
5. Things went well, very well, but it's for a brand new startup which isn't going to offer more than what I make now, and wants to move quickly.

Basically, I'm torn between moving on the startup, or waiting for an established company that's going to offer me a better salary. I've been struggling to make it financially for the last 10 years between student loans, car payments, family and rent. I want to do the right thing. I'm at a point now where I do a little better than breaking even. A stable 50% better salary now basically wipes all my debt within the next two years, and makes life more comfortable. The startup doesn't quite offer that out of the box, but in a couple years, if it goes well in a couple years I could be far better off than just a 50% raise.

Yes, I know it's my decision to make. But this is a damn hard one. This would be a big move for my career if it works out. But I don't know if it's a safe bet to risk it.

since u need $, go w/the established company.

since the dot-com meltdown, you dont make $ off startups anymore. no more mega $$$ ipo's.

and if the startup gets bought out, the owners make zillions, while the workers (ie: you) get a few thousand.

<---------- been there. company got bought out. owner make $1B (yes BILLION!), us worker bee's got 25% salary bonus in the form of new company's stock

grrrrr...

What about your stock options?

 

[anandtechuser07]

I was looking for a job as well back in February and March. I'm a sr. software engineer. When you go for a startup, you are basically playing the lottery. Do you think this company will succeed? It's hard to say. I've met people who worked at 4 or 5 startups during their career. All that time they could have advanced their career at a large company or jumped between smaller but established companies. If you work for a startup that ends up to be Google, then more power to you, but those are rare. So again, it comes back to the lottery. Do you want to spend that $1 on a lottery ticket or on food?

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: anandtechuser07
I was looking for a job as well back in February and March. I'm a sr. software engineer. When you go for a startup, you are basically playing the lottery. Do you think this company will succeed? It's hard to say. I've met people who worked at 4 or 5 startups during their career. All that time they could have advanced their career at a large company or jumped between smaller but established companies. If you work for a startup that ends up to be Google, then more power to you, but those are rare. So again, it comes back to the lottery. Do you want to spend that $1 on a lottery ticket or on food?

That's exactly how I feel. But man would I ever kick my ass if I held that winning lotto ticket in my hand for a few minutes, then just threw it in the trash. :frown:

 

[DaveSimmons]

If they aren't going to pay more, what % of the company's stock are they planning to give you? If none, then you will be working harder with no chance to share in the rewards.

That is, if you'll be giving up $20K/year in salary to take this job, they need to be giving you more than that in stock at the current wild-guess value of the company.

I don't know of a formula for that, but say there is $2 milling in funding, then you are providing an extra (1% of the company's funding) /year in free money to the company by taking a low salary. Since there is a lot of risk in accepting company stock instead of cash, I might expect to get at least 1-2% of the company's stock (not just options) in return.

 

[JS80]

Startups - if the company is successful you have so much more room for moving upwards plus the possibility of being rewarded GREATLY in the case of success through stock options. Obviously it's important to find a start-up with a solid business model and management team, but think about this, someone was willing to fund this company based on it's business plan.

 

[hx009]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
I've been struggling to make it financially for the last 10 years between student loans, car payments, family and rent.

Originally posted by: SunnyD
I wouldn't consider myself a senior level dev, but most places I'm interviewing with seem to.

You've been programming for 10 years and aren't at a senior level? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[SunnyD]

Update (8/6/08):
Well, here's an interesting turn of events. I sent an email asking for them to clarify certain things (benefits, relocation, stock options, etc.) that Sunday requesting that I needed that information before I could make a decision. About two weeks passed and no response. With that, I figured the opportunity was gone and I crafted up a formal email (hah! formal email - that's an oxymoron) declining the opportunity, which also elicited no response...

And today the phone rings. Of course I'm at work, so my wife takes the call and then calls me with the message that the CEO of the company would like to talk to me and to call back ASAP. So I get home, and give a call back... which ended up getting directed to the CTO. After speaking with him, cutting to the chase they want my help to write up some simple code. ??? In the context of a contractor? What? Of course nothing formal.

So, with that said... it proves to me that they haven't hired anybody yet. Of course my question is what angle is this? My main assumption is that either nobody wants to take the craptastic offer they are giving, or they're trying to see if I'd be willing to work off the books or at the very least so they can save on benefits by using me as a contractor. The conversation was especially brief, and there was no mention of any compensation for this little project either. Of course I made no commitment to actually do anything for them either.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Update (8/6/08):
Well, here's an interesting turn of events. I sent an email asking for them to clarify certain things (benefits, relocation, stock options, etc.) that Sunday requesting that I needed that information before I could make a decision. About two weeks passed and no response. With that, I figured the opportunity was gone and I crafted up a formal email (hah! formal email - that's an oxymoron) declining the opportunity, which also elicited no response...

And today the phone rings. Of course I'm at work, so my wife takes the call and then calls me with the message that the CEO of the company would like to talk to me and to call back ASAP. So I get home, and give a call back... which ended up getting directed to the CTO. After speaking with him, cutting to the chase they want my help to write up some simple code. ??? In the context of a contractor? What? Of course nothing formal.

So, with that said... it proves to me that they haven't hired anybody yet. Of course my question is what angle is this? My main assumption is that either nobody wants to take the craptastic offer they are giving, or they're trying to see if I'd be willing to work off the books or at the very least so they can save on benefits by using me as a contractor. The conversation was especially brief, and there was no mention of any compensation for this little project either. Of course I made no commitment to actually do anything for them either.

They are not going to hire you unless they are sure you can code. We've had some hires where we had to fire them immediately because it ended up they couldn't code what he represented. I think we avoid this now by giving "homework" to prospective employees.

Is this homework or a paid outsourced gig?

 

[SearchMaster]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Update (8/6/08):
Well, here's an interesting turn of events. I sent an email asking for them to clarify certain things (benefits, relocation, stock options, etc.) that Sunday requesting that I needed that information before I could make a decision. About two weeks passed and no response. With that, I figured the opportunity was gone and I crafted up a formal email (hah! formal email - that's an oxymoron) declining the opportunity, which also elicited no response...

And today the phone rings. Of course I'm at work, so my wife takes the call and then calls me with the message that the CEO of the company would like to talk to me and to call back ASAP. So I get home, and give a call back... which ended up getting directed to the CTO. After speaking with him, cutting to the chase they want my help to write up some simple code. ??? In the context of a contractor? What? Of course nothing formal.

So, with that said... it proves to me that they haven't hired anybody yet. Of course my question is what angle is this? My main assumption is that either nobody wants to take the craptastic offer they are giving, or they're trying to see if I'd be willing to work off the books or at the very least so they can save on benefits by using me as a contractor. The conversation was especially brief, and there was no mention of any compensation for this little project either. Of course I made no commitment to actually do anything for them either.

You can't make that assumption. It takes me months to fill my positions because it's hard to find the right fit. They're probably wanting a "try and buy" to see if you're capable of doing the job before they invest in hiring you.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: JS80
They are not going to hire you unless they are sure you can code. We've had some hires where we had to fire them immediately because it ended up they couldn't code what he represented. I think we avoid this now by giving "homework" to prospective employees.

Is this homework or a paid outsourced gig?

Neither. This phone call came out of the blue without any sort of pretext, as described above.

Originally posted by: SearchMaster
You can't make that assumption. It takes me months to fill my positions because it's hard to find the right fit. They're probably wanting a "try and buy" to see if you're capable of doing the job before they invest in hiring you.

Again, they wanted to hire me outright pretty much the day that I talked to the CEO last month. I gave resistance because there was a lot of uncertainty as far as benefits and such, and frankly the pay for this position was non-negotiable and rather entry-level. After I fired off my email requesting more information - as I mentioned, I received no further communications after I sent that email until the phone call yesterday.

Now I can see them using this as a test to see whether they could possibly offer me more in terms of salary or whatnot, but I made it pretty clear in my follow up email about two weeks after my initial email that I was no longer interested in the position (if they were in such a rush to hire me in the first place, they could have answered my initial questions in a timely manner). I'm not saying it's the end all be all, but honestly this phone call really came out of the blue, there was no pretext to the situation, and I was basically asked to help them with a small bit of code. Nothing mentioned about contract work, pay or whatnot. If it's a test to see whether they should invest in me, at least say it so that I'm motivated to care. I should also mention that the entire conversation yesterday was no more than 5 minutes and cut right to the chase ("I need some help with this code").