So I've worked at a job a little over a year. They've been very good to me, and I really don't have any complaints about my time there, except that the pay is a little low. That came at the advantage of both working from home and having amazing work life balance.
I recently received a new job offer that looks like it'll be more work, but double my current pay, and will also allow me to help establish myself as a name in my field. I'm really excited, and I accepted shortly after the offer. I also negotiated with them to give me 4 weeks before starting so that I could give my current job plenty of time to transition.
The worst part of this timing is that I work at a very small company, and the only other person who did my role at my level resigned 2 weeks ago. So with my absence there's going to be more work for the higher ups to do.
Unfortunately I just broke the news to them today and the management (particularly the office manager) is very upset. She said she can't believe I'm leaving to go be “a competitor” and keep asking what they could have done better. I told them very honestly that the pay is substantially higher and that I really didn't have any complaints about the company, I just felt like this was a unique offer that I needed to take advantage of.
Is there something else I should have done to make this transition easier? I was really hoping to preserve my relationship with these people because they really treated me well up to now, but clearly that is not looking like it'll happen.