The Blair Hippo Project (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} blairhippo) wrote,@ 2009-05-13 12:09:00 |
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Keeping My Job
I got a job offer last week. Which was unexpected, given that I wasn't looking for one.
Let's start from the beginning.
Several years ago, I was a Tech Guy (and for a while, the Tech Guy) at a startup that made it big and got bought out by Monster. Lots of money changed hands. I wound up with my student loans paid off, and the founders got bona-fide "Fuck You" cash. However, the buyout had a non-compete clause that was ... let's be generous and call it "interesting." Or, let's be honest and call it "odious, punitive, and highly unlikely to actually stand up in court." Whatever. It specified that none of the folks who got money out of the deal were allowed to work with each other outside of Monster for three years after the deal was signed.
Ironically, Monster is a really shit place to work. They bought us out because we'd been kicking their asses in our chosen niche despite having a mere fraction of their resources; and once we were on board, they forced upon us the same myopic bullshit that had made their asses vulnerable to kicking in the first place. The place was every cliche of institutional paralysis and mediocrity that you've ever heard about big corporations. Decisions were made not on the basis of what will work, but what's least likely to get the decision maker into trouble. Protecting your job is your job.
Fuck that.
After about fifteen months, everybody from the old company who wasn't me got laid off. Three months later, I joined them voluntarily. Because walking away with no severance package and no access to unemployment beat the hell out of working for those idiots one more day.
So, there I was, separated from my soon-to-be ex-wife, unemployed, and the entrepreneur I'd helped make a shitload of money for was legally prohibited from working with me again.
Until May 1 of this year.
On May 7, I got an email from my ex-boss. With an offer that wasn't so much a "job" as a "partnership". The words "Vice President of Technology" were in there as well.
It didn't come out of a clear blue sky; I'd had lunch with the guy the day before. I treated it as just getting together with some old co-workers I hadn't seen in a while. He seemed disappointed that I'm happy at my current job, so clearly he had something in mind he was thinking of throwing my way, but I thought I'd taken that off the table by talking about how much I like where I'm at and how little free time I have.
I was obviously mistaken.
The offer was damned intriguing. Salary was less than what I'm making now, but ex-boss said that he'd jack that up once the new business started making money, and I believe him. The guy's always been scrupulously honest with me, even when it wasn't in his best interest to do so. But the real attention-grabber was the equity in the company.
If I'd had this deal in place at the last gig, I would have made an even one million dollars after the Monster deal. I suspect that's why he chose the number he did; he knows I can do math.
He had my attention.
I deferred to think about it, because that's just how I work. I don't like making snap decisions, especially on life-altering issues. For a few days there, I was really doing my best to talk myself into taking it. There's no guarantee that this place will make it big, but I know full well that it could.
But ultimately, I decided against it. My current job is really good. It doesn't have the potential of a million-dollar pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but otherwise, almost everything I liked about working for ex-boss before is here. I'm working 40 hour weeks instead of the 20-30 I used to, which sucks, but even though ex-boss was promising that we could possibly do something like that again with the new gig ... dude. Vice President of Technology. Brand spankin' new company. This is not a recipe for short hours. It is a recipe for loooooong hours.
Otherwise ... I really like the people I'm working with. They're smart and capable; shit gets done around here. I'm very fond of my supervisor, an eccentric alpha-nerd who's personally pleasant, knows more than I do, and is willing to teach. The company has some very sweet best-of-both-worlds action going on: they're still small, but they've been in their business long enough and doing it well enough to be quite stable. Unless the bossman is outright lying to us (which would be out of character), we're weathering the current economic crunch very nicely; it's slowing our growth, not threatening our existence.
It's a damn good gig.
Ex-boss complicated the issue by upping the ante enough to force me to consider it a bit longer but not enough to make it a slam dunk. I contemplated it over the weekend and spoke to him a bit more before deciding that I want to stand pat. As much as I'd love to see what would happen if I worked with him again, I'm just as interested in seeing where this job ultimately winds up. And I'd like to quit doing the IT Nomad thing for a while and stay in one place. The stability won out over the potential riches.
What I think ultimately decided it for me was that as good as IT has been to me, it's not where I ultimately want to make my fortune. To be perfectly honest, the odds that I'll someday support myself as a writer are probably lower than the odds of the job I just declined making me a ton of money. But it's what I love.
And I might yet come out of this whole thing slightly ahead. For the sake of fairness, I told my supervisor that I might be leaving. With my permission, he shared this with the bossman, and the two of them wound up agreeing that I'm probably paid less than what I'm worth.
This discussion will be continued. Yes, he knows I'm deciding to stay, and yes, my negotiating position would be stronger if leaving was still a credible threat, but that's not the kind of relationship I want with my employer. I'm more interested in establishing trust and rapport than I am in milking them for every dollar possible.
Anyway. Lunch is over. Back to work.
I got a job offer last week. Which was unexpected, given that I wasn't looking for one.
Let's start from the beginning.
Several years ago, I was a Tech Guy (and for a while, the Tech Guy) at a startup that made it big and got bought out by Monster. Lots of money changed hands. I wound up with my student loans paid off, and the founders got bona-fide "Fuck You" cash. However, the buyout had a non-compete clause that was ... let's be generous and call it "interesting." Or, let's be honest and call it "odious, punitive, and highly unlikely to actually stand up in court." Whatever. It specified that none of the folks who got money out of the deal were allowed to work with each other outside of Monster for three years after the deal was signed.
Ironically, Monster is a really shit place to work. They bought us out because we'd been kicking their asses in our chosen niche despite having a mere fraction of their resources; and once we were on board, they forced upon us the same myopic bullshit that had made their asses vulnerable to kicking in the first place. The place was every cliche of institutional paralysis and mediocrity that you've ever heard about big corporations. Decisions were made not on the basis of what will work, but what's least likely to get the decision maker into trouble. Protecting your job is your job.
Fuck that.
After about fifteen months, everybody from the old company who wasn't me got laid off. Three months later, I joined them voluntarily. Because walking away with no severance package and no access to unemployment beat the hell out of working for those idiots one more day.
So, there I was, separated from my soon-to-be ex-wife, unemployed, and the entrepreneur I'd helped make a shitload of money for was legally prohibited from working with me again.
Until May 1 of this year.
On May 7, I got an email from my ex-boss. With an offer that wasn't so much a "job" as a "partnership". The words "Vice President of Technology" were in there as well.
It didn't come out of a clear blue sky; I'd had lunch with the guy the day before. I treated it as just getting together with some old co-workers I hadn't seen in a while. He seemed disappointed that I'm happy at my current job, so clearly he had something in mind he was thinking of throwing my way, but I thought I'd taken that off the table by talking about how much I like where I'm at and how little free time I have.
I was obviously mistaken.
The offer was damned intriguing. Salary was less than what I'm making now, but ex-boss said that he'd jack that up once the new business started making money, and I believe him. The guy's always been scrupulously honest with me, even when it wasn't in his best interest to do so. But the real attention-grabber was the equity in the company.
If I'd had this deal in place at the last gig, I would have made an even one million dollars after the Monster deal. I suspect that's why he chose the number he did; he knows I can do math.
He had my attention.
I deferred to think about it, because that's just how I work. I don't like making snap decisions, especially on life-altering issues. For a few days there, I was really doing my best to talk myself into taking it. There's no guarantee that this place will make it big, but I know full well that it could.
But ultimately, I decided against it. My current job is really good. It doesn't have the potential of a million-dollar pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but otherwise, almost everything I liked about working for ex-boss before is here. I'm working 40 hour weeks instead of the 20-30 I used to, which sucks, but even though ex-boss was promising that we could possibly do something like that again with the new gig ... dude. Vice President of Technology. Brand spankin' new company. This is not a recipe for short hours. It is a recipe for loooooong hours.
Otherwise ... I really like the people I'm working with. They're smart and capable; shit gets done around here. I'm very fond of my supervisor, an eccentric alpha-nerd who's personally pleasant, knows more than I do, and is willing to teach. The company has some very sweet best-of-both-worlds action going on: they're still small, but they've been in their business long enough and doing it well enough to be quite stable. Unless the bossman is outright lying to us (which would be out of character), we're weathering the current economic crunch very nicely; it's slowing our growth, not threatening our existence.
It's a damn good gig.
Ex-boss complicated the issue by upping the ante enough to force me to consider it a bit longer but not enough to make it a slam dunk. I contemplated it over the weekend and spoke to him a bit more before deciding that I want to stand pat. As much as I'd love to see what would happen if I worked with him again, I'm just as interested in seeing where this job ultimately winds up. And I'd like to quit doing the IT Nomad thing for a while and stay in one place. The stability won out over the potential riches.
What I think ultimately decided it for me was that as good as IT has been to me, it's not where I ultimately want to make my fortune. To be perfectly honest, the odds that I'll someday support myself as a writer are probably lower than the odds of the job I just declined making me a ton of money. But it's what I love.
And I might yet come out of this whole thing slightly ahead. For the sake of fairness, I told my supervisor that I might be leaving. With my permission, he shared this with the bossman, and the two of them wound up agreeing that I'm probably paid less than what I'm worth.
This discussion will be continued. Yes, he knows I'm deciding to stay, and yes, my negotiating position would be stronger if leaving was still a credible threat, but that's not the kind of relationship I want with my employer. I'm more interested in establishing trust and rapport than I am in milking them for every dollar possible.
Anyway. Lunch is over. Back to work.
