I work for a small 3rd party IT company. The corporate structure is: Large evil company is buying out as many smaller companies as they can that offer similar services all over the US so these companies can operate under the large evil company. I worked for one of the smaller companies and it was a wonderful place to work until large evil company bought us.
Large evil company does not have openings for IT (my department). They hire a third-party IT company to support them. That company hires ANOTHER third-party IT company to provide additional support. I am moved to this third company.
This company honestly isn't that bad. it's all work from home, Very good about work/life balance. Leadership listens and respects its employees. I would stay here forever if I could. The problem is that Company A approves budgets for Company B, and Company B uses that budget to give us, Company C, our budget.
Over the last two years, they have had to put us on worse, more expensive healthcare that no longer covers my medications or procedures that I need. There is also no cost of living raises or performance raises, and recently, They are capping overtime to 1 hr a week (I was recently promoted and one of the agreements was that I could use overtime to make sure all my work was completed because the pay raise they gave me was horrible). This company feels unstable and exists at the whim of a company twice removed from us, and I have effectively taken two pay cuts since being here.
So I applied elsewhere and accepted a position that will give me a pay increase of around 13k a year.
I called the Manager of my company, who works for company B, to tell him and ask for a counter. Instead of offering a counter, he starts telling me that, after taxes and insurance and whatever else, 13k isn't really that much of a raise.
I told him that it is way more than what my current company can pay for, and he had no rebuttal to that.
he then goes on to ask what kind of work I would be doing. I told him it's a smaller IT department, so simpler work with less complex projects.
he tells me that if I were to work there and try to go elsewhere in a few years, no one would hire me because I didn't do any more challenging work to better my career.
I told him I could use my free time and extra money to get certifications. and also, I don't WANT to work in IT all my life. I want to build my own business (working on it and it's actually getting traction) and he said “Yea but that's not as sexy as a woman in IT”
AS IF THE ONLY REASON I WOULD WANT EMPLOYMENT WAS TO BE SEXY,
AS IF THAT'S THE ONLY THING I HAVE TO OFFER.
…I'm glad to be able to comfortably jump this fucking ship.