Take a lesser paying job for a chance at career satisfaction?

Hi there to anyone willing to help advise.

My current employer pays me close to $81K to program CMM's as well as maintain and calibrate gages - quite satisfactory for my lifestyle. After 23+ years in the field I've mastered (3) CMM programming languages and have eliminated inspection as a longtime bottleneck for my employer of (5) years. And I keep the plant's many manual gages running smooth.

However I am responsible for more reports annually than there is possibly time for. With around 20 parts each requiring annual validation and over 1500 gages each requiring regular calibration, let's just say I have had to become creative in order to keep up. The coworkers I'm told should be helping me bear the load are full of excuses and play dumb. The management style is one that basically uses fear to induce conformity - though they seem to recognize that's not necessary with me and take a softer approach.

On top of that l regularly respond to inspections of prototypes, tooling and other dimensional investigations, designing & repairing fixtures, ordering lab supplies and visiting other sites to respond to programming needs. Don't get me started about the suggestion program which regularly eats up valuable time, the clique-like atmosphere with different cultural groups, the lazy & compromising attitude of certain managers to quality issues. I'm not sure if I've just learned to go with the flow or if I'm stagnating. I am in my mid-fifties, but there is definitely more that I want to learn and do in my career.

Now a smaller company with what looks like an attractive straighforward programmer role has an opening which I've been invited to compete for. With around 12 good years left till official retirement do I take a pay cut for a chance at better fulfillment (& integrity)? How do I make this choice? Will I end up in the same mess by never saying 'I can't do that'? How do I brace them here for the big hole I will leave?

Thank you,

What’s the pay cut and why do you think the new company will be any different over time?

Every choice you make comes with an element of chance, so there is always a risk things wont work out just as there is a good chance things will.

So the first thing you must ask yourself is, can you comfortably financially afford to make this change?

The second thing is to ask yourself, are you unhappy enough with your current situation to want to take that gamble of moving on?

If the answer to both of those is "yes", you have your answer.

Perhaps writing down your thoughts, pros and cons, risks, etc. of each job will help you clarify your thoughts.

As for your last question, that's not your problem, don't take on a problem that is not yours to solve. The company made their bed, let them lay in it. They'll get by - trust me. Probably by spending a lot more money than they would have if they had listened to you and helped you to be a successful, contented employee who wasn't looking to leave.

I have faced similar choices in the past. In my case: I stayed with the higher paying job to establish some amount of financial security, even though that good-paying job had huge amounts of stress.

As you self-describe, I was quite good at the job and was very comfortable with my ability to self-direct. There was never a shortage of problems to solve (part of the stress, but I was also able to prevent problems... which I found satisfying), the greatest amount of stress came from superiors who (a) self-inflicted problems and (b) didn't themselves recognize how to triage problems. The latter was extremely stressful because the superiors were 100% reactionary in all the worst ways: we'd have to drop everything to work on whatever they thought was a crisis, and there problem solving methodology never went further than "If *I* am thinking about it, it is a *crisis* any everyone had better damn well fix it." Often we had multiple superiors with this exact attitude, each with a different life-or-death crisis.

I worked at that job until I retired all of my debts and built up a reasonable nest egg; I no longer work at that company.

I have taken a pay cut to get out of really crappy situation, but it was more that dissatisfaction... it was a hostile work environment and affecting my emotional well being. When my wife told me to get a new job I knew I was bringing too much of that anger home.

I have always found it handy to do a spreadsheet of positive and negatives for both sides and see how it balances out... benefit package, commute, PTO policies, work from home possibilities, internal growth, education and training, etc.

And I agree with Mike S - that last question is not your problem. You give your notice and do what you can in that time to tie up the loose ends that you can. Unless you are under contract you are offering notice... in most situations you have no obligation to give any notice at all. So don't let them tell you that you have to give 3 or 4 weeks notice. Two weeks is still standard from what I've seen. But it's your right to just up and quit unless you have a contract that says otherwise.

If you live in an "At Will" employment state, you are not obligated to give any notice at all despite what your employer may say.

Lots of good advice here.

A couple of years ago I was a top candidate for a Learning Development Manager position at a registrar I know well. This would come with a significant pay cut, but the amount of stress and unhappiness with other things (best not discussed here) would make the move worth it.

I didn't get the role because the other top candidate already knew how to make E-Learning modules and I didn't. So what if she didn't know anything about QA & EHS standards or auditing?

This was quite a disappointment but I understood that everyone seems to want E-Learning now. So I decided to stay with my current employer, pay down bills as Tidge described, and teach myself E-Learning on the weekends until I can be ready to make a move. Now, with a couple of modules to show I am starting to make good progress in getting noticed for this effort within my current employer and will continue to maneuver for shifting to a contract position to make these modules after I retire (in about 5 years).

This is not meant to serve as concrete advice, just to mention that important career changes don't always go in a straight line. I also want to point out that unless you know the prospect employer very well, you are adding to your risk by jumping to a new employer. I have had enough jobs over the years to have decided the reason the grass on the other side looks so green is that it's Astroturf.

In 2013 when I called and quit I was well above the $100K level and was told that no person especially a man in his 60's quits a job at that level...........

We've been OK ever since. It's not just the money.

Jen Kirley said:

I also want to point out that unless you know the prospect employer very well, you are adding to your risk by jumping to a new employer. I have had enough jobs over the years to have decided the reason the grass on the other side looks so green is that it's Astroturf.

Click to expand...

I don't know that the OP is adding to his risk. Sometimes the grass is real grass and is greener. For every horror story I'll bet there's a success story; I know many of both. Only he can quantify these risks, but it sounds like there could be some health risks associated with staying.