Buckle up buckaroos….
I’m a Mechanical Engineer for a global company in the transportation industry. I’m about to hit my 5 years with this company (I’ve been working professionally as an Engineer for a little over 7 years). When I first started, the only other guy in the department left about 4 months after I started. This branch of transportation is a really niche field of work so I had a bit of trouble adjusting and getting up to speed with little to no support. About a year or two after that, we had a colleague come here on delegation from one of our offices out of the country to take over the department supervisor role for my department and to also act as a mentor to me since he has about 15 years experience in the field.
Alright, cut to sometime between year 3 and 4 in this position. I finally had a reasonable amount of experience and start asking for more responsibility, more pay, promotions, etc. but damn COVID hit and things got put on hold. During that time, I started studying to get my Professional Engineering license (similar to a Chartered Engineer in the UK or a P.Eng in Canada for those of you not in the US). I told my mentor and department head about my intentions and they said that would be a great step forward and will also come with a pay raise. Well I passed my test late 2021 and provided the proof to my supervisor and department head requesting the pay rise for the new year since that’s when merit increases and such start up. Right before the holiday break I was told that I would only be getting the standard 3% pay rise and that management is “working on something that will definitely make you happy.”
Here's where it gets fun. I got my license application formally approved in early March of this year. Then in late March, half of our engineering staff gets laid off and it’s announced that our branch of the company is going to go through a restructuring. Turns out that the thing “that will definitely make you happy” is that I kept my job in the purge. Which I guess is somewhat of a silver lining. But something wasn’t sitting right because I then brought up my formal approval for my license and how I would like to be compensated appropriately. I didn’t get any answers in return. Not to mention all of the meetings and town halls following this were extremely vague and management isn’t able to answer a lot of relatively simple questions.
I finally get a meeting set with my supervisor and department head sometime in late May to discuss my career goals, future at the company, and appropriate compensation. Keep in mind that I’ve been continuously asking for this sort of thing for the last 2 years. When I asked for a raise due to my license and increase in skills / abilities the answer I got was “there’s no money to give until the next fiscal year” (which starts in October). So then I asked what the expected increase will be. The response to that was “we’re not allowed to say.” Then I started asking about formal promotions, more responsibilities, etc. in order to push this along and justify the increase on paper. Well that would take another 6-12 months because of all these company mandated trainings / seminars I would need to take. Excuse me, but why was this not happening prior to now? You know, like when I first started bringing this up 2 years ago? The overall message of the meeting was that the only way I could get a raise faster was to go out, get an offer from another company, and then provide the offer to management to light a fire and make them move faster.
So I started looking for another job in order to squeeze more money out of my current company. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this whole thing was super sketchy. Why do I need to fight so hard to be compensated appropriately? Especially after running the department with no experience for a little over a year (with minimal issues) and considering how much I’ve improved my skills over the last 5 years.
Cut to today, I just submitted my resignation and did not provide any info on this new company or what they offered me because I plan to leave altogether. Even if my current employer offered me triple my current salary, I still wouldn’t take it. This new company is in a different industry, so I’m taking a few steps back but thankfully I’m used to the workflow and have a lot of experience in the construction field so I should get up to speed quickly. My supervisor called right before I logged off for the day (I’ve been working remote since the pandemic started and our office is moving, so there’s no point to go into an office with no workstations at the moment) and asked how much the new company is offering so that he can take it back to management. I told him that I don’t want to give that information and that management needs to make me an offer. I know what I’m worth, this new company knows what I’m worth, so let’s see what management thinks I’m worth. I’m getting a 30% pay bump by switching and I can almost guarantee my current employer won’t even come close. At this point I’m just letting them sweat a little and to see what they really think of me since I’m “a valuable employee.” I’m still going to this new company. It’s a bit smaller so less red tape, flexible work hours and locations, and everybody seems to be pretty chill and cool. Not to mention the industry I'm moving to has more stability and I have a good feeling I'll be more valued there based on the conversations I've had.
The best part of all this is that I’m really the only person in my department outside of my direct supervisor so I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up shutting the department down or outsourcing to one of the other offices outside of the country. My supervisor will need to take over in the immediate future. He has more experience in the industry, but it’s been about 5+ years since he’s done any sort of engineering calculations, drafting, etc. and his background is primarily electrical (which won’t help much when I’m gone).
This all leads up to the text conversation I mentioned in the title. My supervisor keeps trying to get me to give a number to give to management for a counter offer. I know as soon as I do that, they’ll try to low ball me or guilt trip me for leaving. I’m just curious at this point and want to know what they really think of me and my work.