Between my experience as an engineer working for a mid-sized company and my relationships with many engineering hiring managers, one piece of advice that I feel comfortable giving is never accept a counter-offer from your engineering company.
If you are an engineer who is currently employed and you are looking for a job, it is probably because of one of 3 reasons:
1) You don’t feel you are being paid enough in your current position
2) You don’t feel you are challenged enough in you current position
3) You aren’t getting along with your supervisor and/or co-workers
So you put your resume out there and you get an offer from another company that is 10% to 15% higher than your current salary. You decide that you are going to take the job and when you give your supervisor 2 weeks notice, he or she asks you, “What would it take to keep you here?” Ahhhh…the all so dangerous question. Here are 5 reasons, why your answer should be, “I appreciate the offer, but I have decided that this new opportunity is the best for me and my family at this time, but I hope we somehow get the opportunity to work together in the future.”
1) Remember, you initially decided to leave this company for a reason. If that reason was anything other than salary, than whatever raise they give you isn’t going to make that issue disappear. If you are bored and getting paid $80,000 per year, you will still be bored if they keep you in the same position and give you a 10% raise.
2) The executives in your existing company will immediately label you as a disloyal employee regardless of any action you take after giving them your initial resignation. This is a problem, because should they ever decide to lay people off or cut salaries, you may be one of the first on the list because you were going to leave at one point. Their thought process will be - so how do we know he or she won’t resign again?
3) If you stay, your relationship with your supervisor will probably never be the same (or never be good). It’s just human nature. Think about it, if one of your staff came up to you and said I am leaving, would you be happy about it?
4) If you take the counter-offer, the next time you are up for a promotion, there is a good chance that several of the executives voting on the promotion will vote against you because you were going to leave at one time. This could even happen years after you were going to leave as people seem never to forget something like that.
5) Lastly, and this is somewhat cliché, but I’ll say it anyway, money isn’t everything. If you have an offer from a job that you think will be more enjoyable and put you in a better position to achieve your career goals, take it and never look back!
The most important piece of advice that I will offer on this topic is to only give your resignation your engineering company if you have another offer that you are 100% definitely going to take.
This is a guest post by Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success. Anthony found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website atEngineeringCareerCoach.com and subscribe to the top 3 resources Anthony has used to become a partner in a firm at the age of 27.