Ask HN: How do you deal with the morals of leaving your current job?
To give background on my own specific situation, I am an early 20's IT professional with a beautiful 5 month old baby & a passion for scripting and process automation. I took a new job 5 months ago just as my son (first) was born. In this time, I've learned a lot and grown substantially. I've met an individual I currently consider to be my mentor who has helped me a lot in refining my scripting design and shared a lot of wisdom and experience about the software development field.
As part of my role at this company, I've spent a lot of time developing custom powershell automation scripts and solutions to repetitious tasks that otherwise would have involved a lot of man hours doing manual systems work. I have a few projects coming down the pipeline that I am positioned as a key resource for, using a scripting language that I'm the only one in the company with experience in. Additionally I have been receiving training on a vendor software suite that we're in the process of upgrading, though I can probably wrap this up in about 3-4 weeks if it came down to it.
The issue I'm dealing with morally is that I've been approached by a company via LinkedIn asking me to interview for a role that offers almost twice my current salary to do the "slice" of my job that I enjoy and want to do full time (Scripting & Automation Development) for a much much larger company.
I'm proceeding with the phone interview, and still haven't decided to take it further if the new company decides they want me. Regardless of the outcome, it has raised the moral question in my mind, what should dictate my loyalty to a company?
9 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 24.7 ms ] threadThat being said, your obligation is to yourself, not your company. If your current company isn't meeting your needs, you are not really wrong to leave. If the roles were reversed and you were not meeting your employer's needs, they would likely have few qualms about letting you go and finding someone else. Presumably if this new employer is offering you nearly twice the salary, and you are able to secure that position, your old employer was not really providing a competitive level of compensation.
I am comfortable remaining at my company long-term because they have repeatedly demonstrated valuing me as an employee, and ensuring compensation and benefits are competitive. I probably wouldn't consider a higher offer at current, because despite an on paper increase, I don't know a new employer would continue to demonstrate the value they place in mean over time.
Depending on your new employer's rules and expectations, should you get the job, you can also potentially do a certain amount to soften the blow for your previous employer. I've generally left the open offer to reach out to me if a previous employer has any questions or issues after I left which I might be able to provide insight on. (Far too often, people leave and any knowledge they have disappears immediately, which is something I prefer to avoid with myself.)
This. One hundred times over.
I've considered asking, should this or any other opportunity be offered to me, whether I could be permitted a 4 day work week for the first 3 months in order to have a "soft transition" at my current job. I have no idea whether that would be a reasonable request or not.
Personally, I just would like if it was more common to have more than two weeks between accepting an offer and starting at the new job. Since giving two weeks notice is the expectation for leaving a job, new employers will give it to you, but will tend to push against giving you much more time than that, which is a shame.
I'd like more time to prep a previous employer for my departure, but you can't really notify an employer you're leaving until you've accepted the new position, unless you want to risk that job dropping you before your new job is in writing, leaving you without a paycheck.
Your company will experience people coming and going all the time. Your responsibility is to you alone - you can't hurt a company's feelings.
If you want to advance... then advance. Otherwise some time down the road you might consider it a dead end gig and kick yourself for not moving onward and upward when the opportunities were falling into your lap.
On a scale of 1 - 10, how likely is it that the company you currently work for would give you the benefit of the doubt in a dispute? Are they a company that will be angry if you are 5 minutes late to work, but expect you to stay late after work? Etc.
What if you made a fairly big mistake? Will the company take the time to do a moral audit, as you are doing now? I somehow doubt it.
Also, personally, I think it is unhealthy to attach additional obligations to your job. Your current obligations are to do your job and your duties as assigned - you are not paid to worry about how the company is going to fare if you were to be fired/laid-off/quit/injured. That is for management to worry about.
If these are critical projects, and you are the only person able to complete them - again this isn't your problem and should not be your concern. This would be a management issue with a lack of planning.
You gotta do you, buddy. Especially with a little one at home. Don't get caught up in "doing right by your company". Do right by your child.
But maybe this is why I'm not some C-level exec, because I'm generally not going to put into the company more than I can take out. I don't owe my company more then what they compensate me for - and I sure as hell know they wont be doing a moral audit if they decide to lay me off. Why should I do a moral audit if I want to move on?