2 Job Offers. Hard Decision

I'm going back and worth on these two job offers i have at the moment. I'm currently employed but these two places both offer more experience than my current employer.

Company A :
Offered me 95k .9-5 job mon-fri. no on call.10 mins away from my house and ill never hit traffic. 15k more than i make now. Job would require me setting up site to site VPNs for different clients. I get to work with routing protocols finally including like BGP although i dont think it will entail anything too complicated. Will also learn about Juniper,Brocade,Palo Altos,Cisco and some new Nexus switches. Environment consist of roughly 5000 users. Might be more. Health care plane is great and offers a bunch of other education benefits

Company B:

Offered 80k . A Enterprise and SP environment. I would get to touch a bunch of new tech to me such SDN, Juniper,WAN accelerators, AWS, Cisco ASRs , MPLS , BGP and ect.. Huge environment 40k plus users. SHITTY health care plan(would be like $1000 a month out of my pocket), 40 minutes away from WITH no traffic. Would learn a lot but i am losing out on a lot of money and health issurance would kill me since i have a whole family so that 80k really is much less.

I feel like Company B is better for my career in the long run , but Company A would get me experience and still pay me good.

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NotHackingYou

Company A sounds like a better gig to me.

supasecuritybro

Company A

[Deleted User]

Company A

cyberguypr

Case for A builds itself.

thomas_

I would choose company A as well.

nothimagain

Just scared Company A won't give me much experience.

EANx

How's the insurance from your spouse's employer, can you move the family to hers or is she even worse employed?

I'd lean a bit toward A but a lot depends on how valuable the experience from B would be. Wouldn't be the first time someone took a pay cut to later rocket up the salary scale.

J_86

nothimagain wrote: »

Just scared Company A won't give me much experience.

Experience is what you make it. Who's to say after you get in the door and get acclimated, you don't find something you can improve on with a new skill, etc. Time is also money, a long commute in traffic sucks.

Kyrak

A seems like a no brainier to me. Take it until you stop learning then find the next job at 100K+ and more exp too.

eansdad

Another vote for A. You are talking $27k less including health care and roughly an hour a day driving time. That's 260hrs a year. Imagine what you could study with $27k and 260hrs in the course of a year.

stryder144

So, you feel that Company B would be a better fit. How, if you don't mind me asking? If you read what you wrote, you'll notice that Company A's job description was written positively and Company B's was half positive, half negative. From a psychological perspective, Company A would make you much happier. Company B, not as much. Certainly there are far more technologies touched at B, but you would, practically speaking, be making $68K/per year. That seems like a step back, to me. I, too, vote for Company A.

yoba222

You can never really tell how much career growth a job will give you until you're actually working there. Everything up to that point is essentially a sale's pitch. I'd put less weight on which will provide more perceived career growth and more weight on 80k vs. 95k.

And by 80k vs. 95k I mean 70k vs 95k.

PsychoFin

Like what was already said: imagine how much you could study with only 20 minutes travel time per day! And since you have a family I only have one word for you: Work/Life balance.

DatabaseHead

Well put networker. "company builds a case for itself". And it's not even close.

That 10 minute drive is a BIG DEAL.

DatabaseHead

yoba222 wrote: »

You can never really tell how much career growth a job will give you until you're actually working there. Everything up to that point is essentially a sale's pitch. I'd put less weight on which will provide more perceived career growth and more weight on 80k vs. 95k.

And by 80k vs. 95k I mean 70k vs 95k.

Great point.

mrkdisk

Company A

scaredoftests

Company A. BUT this is your decision..what do you feel in your gut.....?

Kyrak

PsychoFin wrote: »

I only have one word for you: Work/Life balance.

jdancer

How about doing several years at Company A and volunteer for new learning situations? Then parlay that into hopefully another better opportunity at a future company. Bird in hand...

prdemon

Vote for company A on commute alone! ( my commute 1-1/2 to 2 hours each way everyday )

nothimagain

Company B made a counter offer. 5K more plus better health insurance like 300 a month for whole family(im not going to get into the details of how this happened) , but i would need to commute to their location an hour away for like 4 months and then to a close location like 15 mins away . I feel like i messed up now since i already accepted Company A's offer and they are currently writing up my official offer letter and i've been working with company b for some weeks now. Seems like ill be burning some bridges.

Kyrak

I still like Company A. I wouldn't feel bad about turning B down. It's just business. If they had a downsizing they wouldn't feel bad eliminating you. If B offered you 100K it would be a closer decision IMO (especially if B has on call responsibilities).

TheFORCE

Question is why they didn't make you that offer initially? Why make that offer only after they found out you had other offers?

Also on really huge environments theres a lot more controls that you have to go through to play with new tech, not the same in smaller places.

rwmidl

TheFORCE wrote: »

Question is why they didn't make you that offer initially? Why make that offer only after they found out you had other offers?

This right here! End of the day, this is business. Company B didn't want to show all their cards, they lost. Go with Company A, get paid and enjoy your shorter commute.

Moldygr33nb3an

Another entry into the A basket.

Have you thought that Company A may have a position in the future that will be along the lines of B?

scaredoftests

Still go with A.

adam220891

I transitioned to a bigger company and feel like it's less hands-on than the smaller company I was at.

Take the money and easy commute. The worst case scenario could happen where the other job doesn't offer much and totally sucks, plus you're out some money and have a bad commute.

This is an easy choice.

thomas_

I kind of feel like we’re not getting the entire story with company B. I still think company A is the better option.

adaliadella

company A

LordQarlyn

Even after the counteroffer from B, A still seems the better choice. After all, based on the technologies you mentioned in Company A, who is to say you wouldn't get at least some experience with those technologies you mentioned? And if A is offering a good educational benefit, well, we all know how expensive getting certs can be thus anything to help offset the cost is useful. Finally, the 10 minute commute seals the deal for me. Long commutes suck, especially in heavy traffic. If B had bleeding edge brand new technologies that were expected to be in hot demand, then maybe B would be worth it.