A good friend of mine started with a company about a year and a half ago, the company is doing very well and growing quickly and needs good people. He gave me a call and asked me to come down and meet w/ the co-founders and CEO. I liked what I heard so I decided to “officially” interview. Just last Friday I got my offer, and made my decision to accept today.
For the first time in my life it was actually a very tough decision to take a job. In the past it’s always been a “no brainer” in terms of compensation, title, etc. when I’ve taken new jobs. That was not the case this time. I’m currently a Global Account Manager for a large IT seller. It’s a good gig, and means I own the client relationship but I manage about 20 people that are the standard account managers and deal with the day-to-day order BS so I don’t have to. The pay is pretty good, and it’s great a great résumé builder. Recently my boss got promoted, and we just found out the Business Development Manager for this area got his job. So my “new” boss called me instantly and offered me his old gig (BDM for the greater Bay Area).
So there I was, with a job offer on the table and a promotion on the table. Terrible, I know.
Short-term I stand to make more annually for the next 2-3 years staying with my company and being a BDM. But my compensation is heavily bonus-based (and bonus is all off of meeting/exceeding sales goals for the teams I’d manage) and we’re in a heavily slumping economy. Yet, there’s some great résumé stuff involved with the “new” role within my current company.
The other company is still very small ( < 150 ) but growing quickly and the role I’m being offered is also great on a résumé and very interesting to me. They’re offering Business Development Operation Analyst to me. In short it’s sort of “Crew Chief” for their quickly-growing BD team. It’s a more dynamic and interesting role to me, and uses more of my education (BS in CS). With this company looking to double in head-count annually it also puts me in a position to move up quickly and be managing a large team in a few years.
The base salary at the new gig is also much higher than the base I’d receive with my new role at my current company. But, assuming decent sales performance I’d stand to make more short-term staying with my company. However, looking at the long-term picture, the new company offered me a very generous options package at an insanely low strike-price. The company is already showing profit (extremely rare for a software startup in the Bay FWIW) and I have a tremendous amount of faith in the leadership. Both co-founders and the CEO have started and run multi-billion dollar companies previously and have zero doubt this company will make it to that level.
So, being young, single and ready for a new challenge I took the offer with the other company. It’s going to be a LOT of work for the next few years. I’ll be working amongst some exceptionally intelligent people, all of who are very dedicated to the company and have great faith in where it’s going. I’m really looking forward to that, and impacting the future success of a new company. And if this stock does “ok” maybe someday I can buy a 1 room shanty here in CA. Haha.
On a side-note, now that I’m not going to be driving clients around and don’t need a proper “business” car (nor will be reimbursed for it anymore) I think I’m going to sell my IS250. I really enjoyed it and it is a very, very good car for what I previously used it for. But as strange as it sounds I miss my beat old 4Runner and the IS just isn’t worth the $ to me. I’d rather pickup another 'runner and save the $. So who wants to fly to CA and drive home a nice IS!?!
-TJ
