Sometimes, in case you hadn't noticed, life seems to have fun ideas of its own. I've been looking for a job for a few months without much success, doing mostly translations (something I don't think I'm really good at). All of a sudden, it seemed that the whole world wanted to hire me (and I must say that at some point I got a bit confused between some offers).
It was a very tough choice. There were very good offers in places I didn't feel like moving to (eg MKDoc in Sheffield had a very interesting offer), and choice along various axes.
Eventually I picked a job at APR-job, because they appeared to be very nice people, the job seemed interesting (TT web apps, yeah I have been known to use TT though not since I drank the XML kool aid), the salary was very decent, and it was in Paris.
So I was rather happy to know that I was going to have a job like that. But surprise: right before I was about to sign with them, another company jumps up and makes an extremely tempting offer: working with people I know and very much enjoy spending time with, a higher salary, offices a ten minute walk from my place, doing cool SVG and metadata research and working on W3C specs (probably sitting on Working Groups there, maybe in the same ones as Antoine which'd be fun).
So, of course, I gave in... I couldn't find a compelling reason not to. I feel rather bad for letting APR-job down so close to the moment when I was supposed to sign, but the Expway offer was simply too good to be dismissed.
I am thus now employed, and will start rigth after OSCon. I'm really looking forward to it!
I've done that twice. Accepted a position and backed out. The first time, I was miserable in my job so I went and covertly interviewed and found another. It was about a $2000 a year pay cut, but I was looking for a change of pace. When I told my boss I was leaving, he wanted to know why. Wanting to end the conversation quickly, I decided to claim a huge pay boost that I knew they wouldn't match, an increase of 45% over what I was making.
"Oh, we can match that."
And while I apologized to the new company, I definitely wasn't sorry for the decision. In the end it was better for me, better for my family.
--Nat
Re:Woohoo!
pudge on 2002-07-23T18:14:31
I like it when dumb people are positively recognized and rewarded. They need all the help they can get.
Re:email sux
darobin on 2002-08-11T23:27:32
Well I'm sorry if the email happened that close to the signing. I didn't get to choose that, and would have preferred it to be better but that would have been difficult. I wrote as soon as I knew. To be honest it never occurred to me to call because I don't use the phone (I only ever burn half an hour of my 2h monthly forfait), sorry if that didn't seem right.
I agree that it's not the same as skyhook's case, especially as it had nothing to do with the money or with finding the job you offered uninteresting. I was looking forward to working with you, but Expway offered something that I thought would be almost impossible to find in France: W3C membership and the opportunity to do research on topics related to that, and to sit on working groups there.
Only a handful of French companies are members, and then most of them are huge ones (France Telecom, EdF...) where someone else would most likely get the chance to interface with standard bodies. I only had a chance with one other company in Paris, and they've been on a job freeze for months.
Another part of what seduced me was the chance to work with things that I knew very little of, in some cases nothing at all. I find that in the computer space once you're known to be good in one domain (say, webdev) it's hard to move to another because you're not recognized there. I really do not want to stay stuck in a domain, and as I told you during the interview the more chances I get to explore new fields the happier I am.
So I'm really sorry that it didn't go well, and I hope you've found someone that suits your needs. I wish you all the best for the future.
