Money vs. Experience (Very hard question.. need opinions)

levensailor

I was with the same company for 3 years making pennies doing everything. our clients were horrible, equipment outdated, money was not flowing in. I made the move 6 months ago to another company who immediately paid me about 5k more, called me a network engineer and threw all kinds of important projects at me. I configure cisco equipment daily and learning a lot with the 2 senior engineers who have been here for 10+ years. In 6 months I've designed like 10 phone systems, 3 major wan upgrades, and had my hands in some high dollar virtualization projects. Since they do predominately healthcare, its not a job thats going anywhere and pretty much every healthcare provider in wilmington use my company. Lots of internetworking between sites, that sorta stuff my my day to day.

My last company somehow got invested into and they want to move into the hosted services market and need someone to design and maintain that infrastructure. They just called out of the blue and offered me that position for 15k more than I currently make.

Option A. Go back to my previous job with an extra 15k a year in my pocket and probably say goodbye to my cisco experience after the initial datacenter buildout.

Option B. Stay with the company that has treated me great these past 6 months, build my resume, and just be a better engineer period at a pay raise rate of 3% annually?

Everyone

Option B. When you're ready to move on again, you'll be able to move up into something that pays a lot more than the $15k extra going backwards with Option A would give you.

Hypntick

I took a 10k pay cut to work where I am now just to get the level of experience I wanted. I know i'm not being paid at the level that my responsibilities entail, however I know of no other job that will allow me the freedom to grow like this one does. It all depends on what's important to you. However my advice would be to pass on the previous job, something sounds like that won't work out in the long term.

it_consultant

Option C, create a corporation for yourself, contract for option A to get the experience and money, contract option B as well since they already know and like you.

MiikeB

Option A

I think building a hosted service infrastructure from scratch looks way better on a resume than more time spent configuring cisco equipment.

demonfurbie

id stay were your at

money isnt everything and if its a stable company that also helps

cxzar20

Personally I would go with whomever has the best combination of salary, stability/security, hours, and benefits. Option A may pay $15k more, but what kind of hours will you have to put in for it? When it is all said and done you might end up making more per hour with option B.