OT: need advice about difficult career choice

JonJacob wrote: Oh good lord. I shudder at the thought of giving advice, having you take it, and then things not going you're way.

Think of this as a firing squad where only one of you has the real bullet. I am trying to gather a bunch of opinions and weigh them all.

More about my situation. I'm 49 years old. I have 27 years of experience in accounting, but my current job pays about the same amount that a recent graduate could make if he had high grades. My current employer is too small to afford insurance coverage, so I buy my own cheap health insurance with a high deductible. Fortunately, I am ridiculously healthy. I am currently renting an upstairs bedroom and some storage space to an old friend for $550 a month. 10 months of unemployment wiped out a lot of my savings.

I don't have any kids, but I am spending $600 a month helping out my girlfriend until she lands a good job. She is currently working two part-time jobs and finally graduated with a couple of bachelor degrees last summer. We plan to get married in a couple of years, but we don't know if we're going to have a kid. We're both willing, but money is too tight right now. She is in her mid-30s, so we might have a few more years left to try. She has a lot of student loan debt, and I still have a lot to pay off on my mortgage, plus we both have some credit card debt.

I like my current job okay. The commute is easy, the people are nice, and I'm learning some stuff. My boss can be a fussy micromanager at times, but he likes my work. The potential new job is with a big and successful company that is not publicly traded. They have a good reputation, but tend to hire people right out of college and then promote them from within instead of hiring outsiders. Half of the work at the new job would be very familiar to me, and half would be less familiar or new tasks for me. The commute would be twice as far but not terrible except sometimes during winter. I have no idea what my new co-workers would be like.

Aside from the money issue, I have concerns about my next job search. I could just leave my current job off my resume, but a short stint at the contract job might weaken my resume, making it look like I couldn't cut it at a big company. Alternatively, this contract job might get my foot in the door with the company and open up subsequent opportunities there.

I don't think it'll weaken your resume at all. It is an easy decision to move, your reasons to move are valid.

Things must be worse in the States than I thought. I never heard of an accountant having trouble finding work. It's traditionally the safest, most stable industry that always has jobs, and the pay is good. I've been head-hunting for accounting jobs before and i always have to explain to the person that finance is different than accounting and I don't have that skill set at all.

The only time I ever regreted not following through with studies in accounting was when there was a cool accounting job at WB Games. That would have been fun.

Black Barney wrote: I don't think it'll weaken your resume at all. It is an easy decision to move, your reasons to move are valid.

Things must be worse in the States than I thought. I never heard of an accountant having trouble finding work. It's traditionally the safest, most stable industry that always has jobs, and the pay is good. I've been head-hunting for accounting jobs before and i always have to explain to the person that finance is different than accounting and I don't have that skill set at all.

The only time I ever regreted not following through with studies in accounting was when there was a cool accounting job at WB Games. That would have been fun.

I did a lot of interviews during those ten months, but rarely got an offer. The first offer was $10K less than my old job. After turning that down, it took me two more months to figure out that I needed to settle for less money.

This potential job is strange because it's roughly 2/3 accounting and 1/3 finance. Normally a big company would break up the separate functions into separate jobs. I am considered a possible fit because all my small company experience makes me a jack-of-all-trades, for better and worse. I don't fit all the requirements of the new job, but I am theoretically flexible enough to be taught anything involving accounting and finance.

that's why I mentioned the Boilerroom thing. Derivatives trading where you do your own accounting? That is SKETCH.

Well, this new job sounds 1/3 interesting


edit: I got ninja;d by uba! Funny that we both used 'sketch' at the same time.

Yeah, what kind of company wants you to finalize a contract and you don't meet them first?

Whaaaaaaat? No interview? I missed that. I retract my previous opinion. If they can't do at least a 30 minute meet and greet, forget about it. At best, wildly unprofessional. At worst, you're being sold into slavery.

More importantly, there will never be a good time to have children. They are totally worth it though. Just sayin.

I posted my resume on several online job boards and updated it every month to keep it on top of searches, at least until August of this year. So I'm not surprised that they found my resume. In my line of work, the employer always pays the recruiter. For this job to be 2x my current salary, it means that the company will probably be paying 3x to the recruiting agency who will in turn pay me my 2x, net of payroll taxes. I keep using the word "contract" but it's basically just a temp job that happens to pay a lot of money.

The lack of interview by the employer used to be standard, at least with lower-paying temp jobs that I have worked in the past. The lack of interview by the agency is unusual, but is due to a combination of two factors. First, the company is anxious to get somebody started on the job next week, probably due to a calendar year-end close coming up fast. Second, I am too busy at my current job to get away during the work day for a meeting. Accepting this contract job would mean that I couldn't give two weeks notice to my current employer.

mutagen wrote: More importantly, there will never be a good time to have children. They are totally worth it though. Just sayin.

Not to derail but I don't totally agree with this. Definitely agree with the second part, but I would not recommend having children if you can't financially support them properly. If the case is that your girlfriend/wife may be too old if you wait, well then that is kind of a different story and I wouldn't hold it against you.

People having kids and not being able to afford to take care of them is a problem and I commend Shell for at least thinking about that. I have a cousin who has two kids and they are planning on having another, despite the fact that they're on wellfare and can't afford to put up a fence to keep their dog from running away or being hit by a car. Meanwhile, my wife and I had to pay more than their house is worth to adopt our daughter while continuing to pay taxes so that my cousin can stay home and not work and have more children.

Having a kid is a tough call at this stage. At age 49, I am worried about the increased odds of birth defects, and I know that we are too broke at the moment. My girlfriend is 34, so she may have a few more good years in terms of fertility, but she is trying to start a new career in marketing right now. We have been together for over 11 years now.

That is part of the pressure in the current situation. If I knew for sure that this new opportunity would lead to a better career track, the improved cash flow would pave the way to a better life. We could have a kid, pay off our debts, and save for whatever the future might hold. But if I lose the steady job and then this new thing doesn't work out, I could potentially lose everything by the end of 2015.

It would help a lot if my girlfriend could land a full-time marketing job. Cash flows would be more tolerable and I could start paying down debt and saving for the future again. But hiring tends to be slow around the holidays, so I don't expect her to find anything until maybe late January at the soonest.

No one seems to have pointed out the obvious. If you take the contract gig, at the end, you *will have become the 'purple squirrel'." There wasn't one in the Metro area before...and there will be one in the next 6 months. Assuming they DON'T just hire you outright, there will be some instability when the contract is over. Get an updated resume up on LinkedIn [aka "Facebook for recruiters"], check the box that says you're willing to take recruiter calls, and buy a new suit or two.

As someone who basically qualifies as a purple squirrel in my particular field, it has led to a number of serious job opportunities in a tight market. Finally, after 15 years in the same gig, I took advantage of that to get out of a company that sure as hell ain't what it used to be and into a new gig (starting next month).

The money is just frosting on that particular cake.