TL;DR: Small company CEO declines my offer to stay on longer than my required notice period even though it will hurt them a lot more than it will hurt me.
Thought you guys over here might get a kick out of my current situation.
I've been with my current company for a little under a year now (IT). Things have been rocky for most my time here, but I've managed to very quickly establish myself and become quite a core member of the team as the only Support Engineer working full-time (The other engineer works 2 days a week, and my manager, who I will state here has been absolutely amazing this entire time, has limited IT capabilities himself).
Following a family bereavement that seriously rocked my entire world in October (Just to add context here; this happened on a Friday, and I knew I'd be an emotional mess for the following week so stated as much. They “gave” me the time off, but on my return I found out only the Friday was given to me as compassionate leave, the following week was taken from my annual leave without even being confirmed I was happy with that situation. MAJOR red flag that somewhat started me down this road) I started to question what it was I wanted to do.
While I like the people I work with in the company, the work itself hasn't been great and I feel I've been majorly under-utilised due to having no formal training around the bespoke software being supported by myself, much of it being me having to pick through the code myself, with a helping hand here and there where the devs could afford it (as they've all been bogged down with project after project since I started). So when recruiters came knocking at my door in December, I was willing to listen to the offers.
One thing lead to another, and after a couple of interviews with one very promising company I found myself last week being offered a new role, more in-line with what I want to do with my career and with a roughly 30% pay increase to cap it off. I couldn't really say no to the offer, but I wanted to offer my current company a chance to counter, as quite frankly they're not in the best position as it is, and with my departure there's going to be quite a hole left that only the devs could fill, but again, all bogged down with their own projects to focus on.
Queue meeting with our Head of HR (who, to note, is also our CFO). He's been supportive of me in the past, especially with some mental health issues I've had between the bereavement and now. While I didn't expect a counter-offer, having a rough idea that they couldn't afford it, I wasn't quite expecting to see the wolf in sheeps clothing as much as I did. What followed was a meeting with him providing empty promises (“You'll get more pay when we can bill clients for more of your time” You… realise that half my time is going to be working in our own DevOps environment… Right? This also came right after he told me “not to focus on the money”…) playing on my mental health (“Are you sure this is going to be the best move for your mental health?” etc.) and offering me a minimal base salary increase even though there has been talks of performance-based increases (To them, billable time = performance, seeming to disregard everything else). It was capped off with him telling me to “go with my gut”, which at the time was screaming “BRATAN, GET OUT OF HERE!”, so the choice was made in my mind, I just had to work out leaving/start dates before putting anything through formally.
I have a trip abroad planned for April for a few weeks, so I was hoping that I would work an extended notice period with my current company, finish with them just before my holiday, then start with new company on my return. Discussed this with new company; more than happy with the situation, told me to get the contract back to them with an amended date and the ball would start rolling for on-boarding and the like. This would also ensure that there was plenty of time at my current company to document anything required, train up the juniors being on-boarded a bit, and basically help out the company by stopping devs from having to suddenly play support too. I'd get my holiday without using leave from my new company and go into it fresh, and still have most my expenses covered beyond that, including being paid about a week of unused holiday. Win-win-win, right?
So today I wrote up my resignation letter, thanking them for having me and the experience I've gained over this time, and setting my final day before my holiday, with explanation that I thought it would be beneficial to the company for me to do so. Manager thought it sounded good, so off it went to Mr. CEO.
Mr. CEO came back to me a couple hours later stating two things:
- While he appreciated my offer of an extended leaving period, he “didn't want to hold me back from starting my new role”
- I'd have to use any unused holiday at this point prior to leaving
Honestly, I half expected this, but thought he'd rise above the occasion and do what would benefit the company the most (keeping me on for the extended leaving period), but apparently not. From my perspective, this is going to cause a shit-show for the company, as the devs are going to be forced to do support work, which most of them actively avoid when possible, the juniors being on-boarded are only going to have me for a very limited time, and they have no hope in hell of replacing me in that month period, or finding someone with my level of experience for the wage they'll likely offer.
I haven't heard any further from my manager since, but I know he fully agreed with my thoughts regarding staying on longer and the benefits it would provide. Apparently him and Mr. CEO are going to have a chat soon to confirm everything. I just can't understand why, when your company is in the near-dire position it is in, you'd decide to reject an offer of help like that, other than to be passive-aggressive. Since Monday, between the meeting with HR and now this, my thoughts on the company have definitely soured and at the rate they're going, the company is not going to exist within the next couple years. One other employee finished today, another “parted ways” with the company a week ago (which is a whole other story tying into my distrust of the leadership team here), and I know at least one other employee who's onto second-stage interviews with a couple of companies currently.
Even though I've seen the writing on the wall for a while now, I genuinely did hope for the best for the company prior to these events, now all of the leadership can go suck it, and I hope the remaining employees, who are all incredibly good, skilled people, make tracks before the business collapses in on itself.
I'll be taking the new job after my holiday regardless, as I am very lucky to have support in my life that will help me see through my unemployment period relatively painlessly. This is a small company too (<20 people inc. leadership) so losing people really does hurt, and I think because of his sour feelings to me leaving so soon after joining, he's decided that the petty route is better than the logical route. Happy to update following the managers dicussion if anyone is interested.