Tokyoite's Major Fork in Career Road, Any Advice? PMOs welcome
severance26
Member Posts: 5 ■□□□□□□□□□
Hi all, lurker here. I'm forced to come out into the light because I'm in a pretty crazy situation with my job and could use some advice. Due to my sorta unique situation I don't have anyone to give me advice. I'll be brief as I can (riiiight).
I'm an expat living in Tokyo. I'm bilingual, which is somewhat rare in Japan. This helped me change careers on March 1st this year. I got a job with a small IT consulting firm in Tokyo. We don't touch the logical side, just do consulting for everything from cabling to project management. Simply because its hard to find bilingual people, I have been able to do stuff most people need years of experience to do; cabling for a major international financial company in a Tier 3 (Japanese equiv) facility, DC Ops, remote hands all over Tokyo in some pretty sick data centers, and even helped with some consulting work in Roppongi Hills. The latter especially was way above my pay grade, but we started losing workers in this company the day I arrived, so who else could do it? It was a great learning experience.
Long story short, we went from 14 to 7 workers. Some people got great jobs elsewhere, but management has issues. Typical small company problems. I was already doing more than one full-time contract job for the company from the start; not really anything unusual in this country. With a small company if you don't do it yourself, no one else is going to do it for you. Certainly despite the difficulty, I've learned a ton of stuff and had a bunch of great experiences. However I am paid on salary. I started at 30k and I don't write overtime on my timesheet. The job I left in February paid me 53k (not IT), was first shift, no overtime. My new company promised to get me back to 50k in two years, but they've taken some blows.
So. At the end of September, when my manager and the no. 2 in the company left and brought us to this situation, I told the CAO that I wanted AT LEAST 40k. Not at my yearly review, but now. I didn't give her a direct ultimatum, but I told her not to wait, and it was pretty obvious what was going on. The next two days I went to two different interviews with IT staffing companies.
Computec Japan offered me a job, which I did not immediately accept. they said "40k, 40k plus" and they have other benefits as well. However Computec is pretty much Microsoft and Cisco's lapdog. If I worked there, I have to get my MCSE asap. The president told me not to bother with the CCNA yet which I've been studying for and would have to put on hold. He said that if I could pass a MCSA Win 10 test in one month, that would be good. Basically passing the test = me being able to barter for the "40k plus," I could probably get 43 out of him, if I pass. If I don't I pretty much lose all leverage.
So he said one month for the Microsoft 60-697 test, on the last day of September. Today is Oct 11. I'm halfway through Panek's MCSA Microsoft Windows 10 Study Guide: Exam 70-697 (which is awful).
There is no guarantee that if I stay I'll get that raise. However their lack of response so far is not so much a "no" as much as the fact that management is kind of a mess.
So, techexams, should I leave this company after a scant 8 months and work for the Microsoft/Cisco machine? It will certainly be a typical boring helpdesk job. I feel like my options get pretty narrow after that. My current boss gets paid 30k/month for consulting, which makes a helpdesk seem pretty lame. I'd be giving up PM'ing for the straight and narrow of the IT logical side.
Your advice is very welcome.
よろしくお願いします。
I'm an expat living in Tokyo. I'm bilingual, which is somewhat rare in Japan. This helped me change careers on March 1st this year. I got a job with a small IT consulting firm in Tokyo. We don't touch the logical side, just do consulting for everything from cabling to project management. Simply because its hard to find bilingual people, I have been able to do stuff most people need years of experience to do; cabling for a major international financial company in a Tier 3 (Japanese equiv) facility, DC Ops, remote hands all over Tokyo in some pretty sick data centers, and even helped with some consulting work in Roppongi Hills. The latter especially was way above my pay grade, but we started losing workers in this company the day I arrived, so who else could do it? It was a great learning experience.
Long story short, we went from 14 to 7 workers. Some people got great jobs elsewhere, but management has issues. Typical small company problems. I was already doing more than one full-time contract job for the company from the start; not really anything unusual in this country. With a small company if you don't do it yourself, no one else is going to do it for you. Certainly despite the difficulty, I've learned a ton of stuff and had a bunch of great experiences. However I am paid on salary. I started at 30k and I don't write overtime on my timesheet. The job I left in February paid me 53k (not IT), was first shift, no overtime. My new company promised to get me back to 50k in two years, but they've taken some blows.
So. At the end of September, when my manager and the no. 2 in the company left and brought us to this situation, I told the CAO that I wanted AT LEAST 40k. Not at my yearly review, but now. I didn't give her a direct ultimatum, but I told her not to wait, and it was pretty obvious what was going on. The next two days I went to two different interviews with IT staffing companies.
Computec Japan offered me a job, which I did not immediately accept. they said "40k, 40k plus" and they have other benefits as well. However Computec is pretty much Microsoft and Cisco's lapdog. If I worked there, I have to get my MCSE asap. The president told me not to bother with the CCNA yet which I've been studying for and would have to put on hold. He said that if I could pass a MCSA Win 10 test in one month, that would be good. Basically passing the test = me being able to barter for the "40k plus," I could probably get 43 out of him, if I pass. If I don't I pretty much lose all leverage.
So he said one month for the Microsoft 60-697 test, on the last day of September. Today is Oct 11. I'm halfway through Panek's MCSA Microsoft Windows 10 Study Guide: Exam 70-697 (which is awful).
There is no guarantee that if I stay I'll get that raise. However their lack of response so far is not so much a "no" as much as the fact that management is kind of a mess.
So, techexams, should I leave this company after a scant 8 months and work for the Microsoft/Cisco machine? It will certainly be a typical boring helpdesk job. I feel like my options get pretty narrow after that. My current boss gets paid 30k/month for consulting, which makes a helpdesk seem pretty lame. I'd be giving up PM'ing for the straight and narrow of the IT logical side.
Your advice is very welcome.
よろしくお願いします。