Career question

I always support a shorter commute and more money.

I don't really have any advice to give. I just wanted to say that I Start getting real itchy when I work at a place with more than double digit employees. I get downright miserable when it gets to over 100. I can't fathom working at a place that has over 500. Nope. 

Not counting the owners my current employer has 8 employees including me. I couldn't be happier.

jstand said:

Pete Gossett said:

In reply to jstand :

I've been through it with both big and small companies. The big one was an attrition process that lasted several years, and I knew it was coming. The small one mostly caught me by surprise, although I was already planning my exit - I'd applied for two jobs right before I was let go, and got one of them about 6-weeks later.

I was curious how much of the previous  replies were from people's personal experience and how much was based on what they had heard from others. 

Did you end up in a better position?

My experience was positive, looking back at it from where I am now.  At the time there was some stress, but overall I ended up in a better position with higher pay. 

It sounds like the OP might see an upside in quality of life in exchange for the added risk. The shorter commute would help with work life balance, and a salary increase could help fund hobbies to do with the extra time. 

That's assuming that the PTO benefits are as good as what I have now, which are better than anything in the US short of the auto industry. 

Is the auto industry known for good amounts of PTO? What's "good"? 3-weeks to start? 5?

pheller said:

Is the auto industry known for good amounts of PTO? What's "good"? 3-weeks to start? 5?

Better for alfadriver to answer, but I'm pretty sure it's about 5 weeks.

You currently have a stable income you have a good position to negotiate from, so salary, PTO and other aspects are negotiable. 

They may not want to budge, but you are in a position you don't need to take it if they won't meet your target. 

mtn said:

pheller said:

Is the auto industry known for good amounts of PTO? What's "good"? 3-weeks to start? 5?

Better for alfadriver to answer, but I'm pretty sure it's about 5 weeks.

At Fiat/Chrysler I started with 10 days vacation plus the week between Christmas and New Years (Which, as far as I know, all OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers shut down for).  After 3 years I got 12.5 days.  At 5 years 15 days. 

My current auto industry gig started with 10 days and the Christmas break.  After 5 years I get 15 days. 

logdog said:

mtn said:

pheller said:

Is the auto industry known for good amounts of PTO? What's "good"? 3-weeks to start? 5?

Better for alfadriver to answer, but I'm pretty sure it's about 5 weeks.

At Fiat/Chrysler I started with 10 days vacation plus the week between Christmas and New Years (Which, as far as I know, all OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers shut down for).  After 3 years I got 12.5 days.  At 5 years 15 days. 

My current auto industry gig started with 10 days and the Christmas break.  After 5 years I get 15 days. 

This is similar to my experience as well. Although we can roll over up to 80 hours of unused vacation to the following year.  So, after 5 years, you'd have 120 hours of PTO, plus as much as 80 additional hours rolled over, plus the week between Christmas and New Years, and another 40 hours for most Federal Holidays (Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving).  So I guess that's potentially 280 hours (7 weeks) of PTO/Holiday pay after 5 years.

Many manufacturing plants will also have a 1 week shut down in the summer for maintenance and resetting, although that's not necessarily always paid time off.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

In reply to STM317 :

No risk no reward.  But then I moved back to a cheaper place and kept the same salary.   Gotta keep moving   Keep hustling. Amazon was not the place nor seattle the city. But in those three years away. I came back to the same company I left with an 70% pay jump and three level upgrade.(not bragging just data)  I'm also on the nomadic corporate life train.  I ve never stayed in the same place long enough to really put down roots. Hopefully I'm at a level that I don't need to do this so much anymore.  I'd rather travel than have my family move. No risk. No reward. 

Glad it's worked out for you! I think there are 2 basic mindsets here. On one hand, you can chase the salary and take the risk, and allow your career to dictate where/how you live your life. Or on the other, you can allow where/how you live your life to dictate your career. It kind of reminds me of the parable about the Mexican Fisherman and the investment banker. As you said, there's a risk/reward play involved, and I'm sure there are examples of each case working out well or failing horribly. Neither approach is wrong of course, you just have to figure out what works for you based on situation and priorities.

jstand said:

Pete Gossett said:

In reply to jstand :

I've been through it with both big and small companies. The big one was an attrition process that lasted several years, and I knew it was coming. The small one mostly caught me by surprise, although I was already planning my exit - I'd applied for two jobs right before I was let go, and got one of them about 6-weeks later.

I was curious how much of the previous  replies were from people's personal experience and how much was based on what they had heard from others. 

Did you end up in a better position?

My experience was positive, looking back at it from where I am now.  At the time there was some stress, but overall I ended up in a better position with higher pay. 

It sounds like the OP might see an upside in quality of life in exchange for the added risk. The shorter commute would help with work life balance, and a salary increase could help fund hobbies to do with the extra time. 

The first time, not at all. The territory close to home I'd been promised didn't happen, which left me driving all over 3/4 of Indiana(I lived in IL at the time). Plus, between my interview and start date they'd been bought out. 5-months later and *that* company got bought out by Xerox - on April Fool's day no less. It only took one visit to their training center to realize I'd be going through the same attrician process all over again, so I took the next job I found(a tiny family owned place - in some ways it was worse). 

The last time, from the family-owned place above, worked out well. The company is amazing(employee-owned), and although I could likely increase my income by going elsewhere, I have no desire to deal with that level of stress & bullE36 M3 again. 

logdog said:

mtn said:

pheller said:

Is the auto industry known for good amounts of PTO? What's "good"? 3-weeks to start? 5?

Better for alfadriver to answer, but I'm pretty sure it's about 5 weeks.

At Fiat/Chrysler I started with 10 days vacation plus the week between Christmas and New Years (Which, as far as I know, all OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers shut down for).  After 3 years I got 12.5 days.  At 5 years 15 days. 

My current auto industry gig started with 10 days and the Christmas break.  After 5 years I get 15 days. 

The Christmas/New Years shut down rocks.  So one starts with 3 weeks of vacation from the start- just that one is always the same week.

We've been doing the 4th of July shut down for just over a decade now- but that counts for your vacation allotment.

And I don't get to roll over vacation- but we do get to buy it.  Which, in the reality of the world, is the most satisfying pay cut of all time- the company saves money, and I'm happy to take time off.  

After 20 years, I got 4 weeks PTO, plus the Christmas/NY week, and I normally buy a week and a half- so I'm out 7-8 weeks of the year.  Yea- two whole months.

Based on the ability to travel, and the ability to take time off whenever I feel like it (or more importantly now, when I need to- as people are aging)- this is one of the best reasons to work for a big corporation.  I don't have to schedule anything in advance, the "asking" for time off isn't asking as much as telling, I don't have to co-ordinate any time off with other people's vacations, etc.

The key is being stable for the future- and we've planned that from before we got married.  With that taken care of and reviewed regularly, we can spend our money going places and experiencing things.  Like this past weekend, we went to Havana.

I totally get people who want to be in a small company, or are work-aholics or something like that.  But I'm not, and I'm happy being a cog in a massive corporation where I can both contribute and get lost when I want to.

Nick (Bo) Comstock said:

I don't really have any advice to give. I just wanted to say that I Start getting real itchy when I work at a place with more than double digit employees. I get downright miserable when it gets to over 100. I can't fathom working at a place that has over 500. Nope. 

Not counting the owners my current employer has 8 employees including me. I couldn't be happier.

Wow, that's insanity. I think the company that just bought us, so now we have something like 160k employees worldwide, originally NetSuite was about 5000 employees. But they are spread out all over the world.....literally. OKC, San Mateo, Atlanta, Denver, London, Brno, Barcelona, Uruguay, Malaysia, etc.

There are only about 55 people here in the OKC office, but there is rarely that many here at one time since most people work from home a few days per week.

There are some definite perks to being in a massive company. Most smaller companies couldn't pay me what I make now for level of experience. When I signed on, I got a batch of RSU's that are worth roughly 6 months salary at the moment. I have outrageously awesome health insurance that costs me $35/month. I work from home a few days per week, schedule is very flexible, etc. Tons of perks and discounts on stuff just because of the name on my paycheck. 20% off Verizon cell plans, and numerous discounts on other stuff for example.

The smallest company I ever worked for was around 400 employees in a manufacturing setting. Hopefully, I'll never have to do that again.

Talked with the guy again. Still interested. Actually, at this point I'm mostly interested in working for him. Seems like the people there are loyal to him, and looking at his track record where he goes, success follows. 

It will come down to salary benefits. My health benefits now are OK, not great. My 401k benefits are above average, still not great. I'm underpaid (well, am I? This goes to that whole job-jumping for more income thing), but the time off is excellent (22 days Vacation, 10 Holidays, 6 six days--I think I've used 2). I rarely work more than 45-50 hours in a week. Can the new company come close? FWIW, I value my salary/income on an hourly basis, even though I'm salary. When I went from my last job to this one, I got a 50% pay increase (worked out to about 20% when you considered COL adjustments) on an annual basis, but it was 58% on an hourly basis--I went from 13 vacation days with 7 holidays to 22 and 10. Big difference. 

This is all assuming I even get an offer. I still have a few (2-3) interviews left. I'm extremely curious to see what my current company will say--this [figuratively, but almost literally] could not be coming at a worse time for my current department. We're a team of 5 with 2 open positions (new positions just created); my peer on the team of 5 is about to leave for 2 weeks on a vacation she's had planned for a year and my colleague just left on maternity leave--a month prior to her due date. We had to cancel a baby shower we had planned for the day of the birth! Best case scenario, I drag the interview process out for a couple weeks (not trying to do that, but scheduling may work out that way) and then ask for a 3 week notice period. 

z31maniac said:

Nick (Bo) Comstock said:

I don't really have any advice to give. I just wanted to say that I Start getting real itchy when I work at a place with more than double digit employees. I get downright miserable when it gets to over 100. I can't fathom working at a place that has over 500. Nope. 

Not counting the owners my current employer has 8 employees including me. I couldn't be happier.

Wow, that's insanity. I think the company that just bought us, so now we have something like 160k employees worldwide, originally NetSuite was about 5000 employees. But they are spread out all over the world.....literally. OKC, San Mateo, Atlanta, Denver, London, Brno, Barcelona, Uruguay, Malaysia, etc.

There are only about 55 people here in the OKC office, but there is rarely that many here at one time since most people work from home a few days per week.

There are some definite perks to being in a massive company. Most smaller companies couldn't pay me what I make now for level of experience. When I signed on, I got a batch of RSU's that are worth roughly 6 months salary at the moment. I have outrageously awesome health insurance that costs me $35/month. I work from home a few days per week, schedule is very flexible, etc. Tons of perks and discounts on stuff just because of the name on my paycheck. 20% off Verizon cell plans, and numerous discounts on other stuff for example.

The smallest company I ever worked for was around 400 employees in a manufacturing setting. Hopefully, I'll never have to do that again.

My salary and benefits are all better at my current company (1,500 employees, just purchased by a 42,000 employee company) than my last company (60,000 employees) with the sole exception of a pension. I expect salary to go up significantly in the next role again. I also like the smaller company feel a lot more. 

That being said, I am happy in either setting and can definitely make a very strong argument for the large companies. In fact, one of my biggest concerns is that for the future, nobody would know this current company when reading my resume. 

I started my career at a Fortune 500-size bank, and have moved down in company size progressively since. There are definitely trade-offs - the F-500 bank had better non-financial compensation and I wasn't working as hard, but I had to leave for a new employer to get any sort of meaningful promotion/compensation increases.  My current employer is small in one sense but not really in another (subsidiary of a health insurance company but operating largely independently), and it seems to be the best of all worlds - it's the ability to move quickly as a small company, with all of the non-financial compensation of a large one.

That said, my biggest takeaway from my career experiences so far is that the biggest factor in whether you will be happy on a day-to-day basis is your boss. Regardless of company size your boss can either make your life awesome or a living hell, and I've experienced both within the same company.

Also - since you mention this place has 12 employees in the US, I am assuming you are going to end up with small-group health insurance or needing to purchase on the individual marketplace - make sure you factor in the difference in health care expenses when you go to negotiate salary. I've definitely gotten sticker shock in the past moving to a smaller employer in this regard.

szeis4cookie said:

I started my career at a Fortune 500-size bank, and have moved down in company size progressively since. There are definitely trade-offs - the F-500 bank had better non-financial compensation and I wasn't working as hard, but I had to leave for a new employer to get any sort of meaningful promotion/compensation increases.  My current employer is small in one sense but not really in another (subsidiary of a health insurance company but operating largely independently), and it seems to be the best of all worlds - it's the ability to move quickly as a small company, with all of the non-financial compensation of a large one.

That said, my biggest takeaway from my career experiences so far is that the biggest factor in whether you will be happy on a day-to-day basis is your boss. Regardless of company size your boss can either make your life awesome or a living hell, and I've experienced both within the same company.

Also - since you mention this place has 12 employees in the US, I am assuming you are going to end up with small-group health insurance or needing to purchase on the individual marketplace - make sure you factor in the difference in health care expenses when you go to negotiate salary. I've definitely gotten sticker shock in the past moving to a smaller employer in this regard.

It probably will be sticker shock, but they actually have more employees than 12--they have probably 20-50 working in their retail stores--maybe 25% of them are full time? I actually don't know the answer to that. The 12 number is just the corporate employees (President, sales, finance, e-commerce, marketing). In any case, it is likely still small-group since that is all done by state IIRC. I'll talk with my FIL on that front, as he sells that E36 M3. 

I just went through this.  I cut my teeth in telecom with a smallish company, TelCove (Remember Adelphia? TelCove is what was left).  TelCove was a great company and I thrived/moved up pretty quickly in my first two years.  They were then bought by Level 3 - and I got my first real look at what it was like to work for a big corporation.  I found that safe rigidity stunted company growth and made for boring days.  I bounced around a few other telco's but ended up with a small auditing firm of 20 employees, leveraging my telecom/IT experience into an executive level position.  Pay, great.  Benefits, standard.  Time off, as much I wanted.  Boss...........absolutely hated the guy.  

I left that company 7 months ago and took a 30% pay cut.  I'm back with a large rigid company but working for a boss who I both trust, and like.  Time adds perspective.

Stress takes years off your life.  Stress free > Money.

Pete Gossett said:

In reply to mtn:

Run away. We're due for another economic downturn - you don't want to be searching for $20 sock buyers WTSHTF.

To expand on that, the size of the company is mostly irrelevant in this case, rather it's their products and market. While it's possibly true the majority of their clientele will also be those least affected by the next downturn, they'll still likely curtail spending somewhat.

Came here to say exactly that. You beat me to it.

Quote doesn't work, but I agree with Less Stress > More Money. If you can get into a work environment where you've got a good relationship with your boss and coworkers, you're more likely to stay around than a high paying gig where you hate everyone you work with. 

PTO? Benefits? What language is this?

Queue the Tom Petty--the waiting is the hardest part.

I had a phone interview with the CEO yesterday. Prior to it, the hiring manager sent me a new job posting (same position)--they had re-written it to better match my resume. Without counting any chickens, it seems that I have an offer coming before too long. Now the question is how much is the total benefits package--salary, 401k match, health insurance, and vacation. I'm not sure what the increase will need to be, but I've got all my spreadsheets ready to plug the figures in. 

Good Luck!

Potentially agreed to everything. Just need to see it in writing.