I just graduated with a B.S. in CS in May 2023. I’ve been working at a big non tech company in a data engineering type of role with AWS and Terraform. My team’s culture, team members, and PTO hours are great. The work is easy, but I also don’t learn much from it.
I’ve only been at the job for three months, but I was just headhunted by a recruiter for a tech company similar to iRobot ( they don’t sell robot vacuums, but they sell hardware with similar levels of tech behind it and are in the same stage of growth and have also been recently bought out by a magma company). They are offering about 25% higher base than my current total comp. Both jobs are remote btw.
However, I am wary of the notorious culture of the magma company that bought it and how often that new parent company fires its devs. I am also wary of how a 3 month job would look like on my resume.
Edit: yes, this is in the US
I’m assuming you’re from the us since you mentioned pto.
Are the benefits equal other than the pay? Or are you taking an increase in pay and losing pto, healthcare, 401k, etc?
If you lose out on other benefits I would pass. The 25% pay bump won’t count for much if your healthcare cost is non existent or so over priced it may as well be.
Work life balance and a pto are crucial for your health and life in general. I’d recommend avoiding work places that don’t value work life balance if possible. Unfortunately it’s hard to gauge their sincerity here before you join.
If the benefits are about the same and you get a 25% bump in pay then it’s worth the risk.
The other benefits are about the same, only PTO is lower. I don’t know anyone who works at that company to ask about work life balance, but I know that SWEs at the parent company that bought it do regularly end up working in the evenings and weekends to meet deadlines.
Not sure how much of that demand and pressure the parent company puts on this company.
If this is a cultural expectation, then it’s safe to assume you will be expected to sacrifice your nights and weekends as well. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, walk away. Personally, I refuse to work someplace that doesn’t encourage a good work life balance. I spent a lot of years giving up my nights and weekends. Whatever benefits I got from it, and they were negligible at best, were not worth the cost.
Tough call then. Thats a good pay bump but not worth it if it costs your evenings and weekends.