Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So, the stuff DH was doing Valentine's Day evening that I couldn't talk about. I can talk about it now: He was doing the paperwork related to applying for a new job.

The place where's he's worked for the past 5 years is a total cesspool with no hope for improvement*. DH hasn't been happy there for the better part of 3 years. A couple of years back he looked for and was offered a new job, but wasn't convinced that other company was any better. As part of that process, the owner was able to re-convince DH that he could make a contribution to the future of the company. In the past few months DH has come to realize the company would never change unless the owner left the company** (which to be honest, he has very little life outside work, so he'll probably keep the company under his thumb until he dies, probably at the office!). He's been dreading going to work but hadn't had enough of a push to look elsewhere.

A couple of weeks ago it really came to a head for DH. The work load has dropped to practically nothing, the company has some contracts but the entities are stalling on making decisions, he was getting direct hits from the company owner regarding a project on which DH kept asking for guidance but received very little - and apparently made all the wrong decisions (not that the project is going badly, the owner just didn't get his fingers in it). In short, he's no longer feeling the love.

That evening he hit up Monster to see what might be out there locally (within reasonable driving distance & time) and found one position so appealing that he called me in from the other room to the office to show me the position description. That evening he polished up his resume and sent it off with a cover email to the company's in-house recruiter (in California, this is a large, national company).

The recruiter called the next day to set up an interview with the local manager (in Richmond). That was Valentine's Day morning. By the time we had dinner that evening he was still glowing (I know, men don't glow, but he was so happy) about the company, the people he would be working with, doing something so completely different (yet related), and most importantly the thought that he would no longer have to deal with the crap at his current job.

Friday he had a couple of follow up questions, revised his base salary request, and was told they would call him the beginning of the following week. Of course, on Monday he heard nothing, which drove him crazy. The more he thought about the potential for what he would be doing, the more excited he got, and the more afraid that he'd done something (namely increasing his salary request) to blow his chances. But late Tuesday afternoon, he got the call to look for an email from the recruiter.

The email came with a contract, at the increased salary he had requested. He was so happy. The only clause was a drug test, which came back yesterday, clearing the clause. (This is what I was waiting on.) For better or worse, today is R-Day. R for resignation. DH plans to take his subordinate to lunch so he hears it directly from DH before the news starts flying around the office.

Of course, DH will have to work out his 4 weeks notice at his current job, which will probably be hellish because the owner is known to take every departure as a personal insult, and thus will take every opportunity to belittle any departing employee. Talk about unprofessional! But it's pretty par for the course with all the other unprofessional things the owner does. It's really a wonder the company has been in business as long as it has.

In the end, the decision to change jobs really was a no-brainer decision for DH. The biggest con (for me) is that his commute will now be 20 minutes longer, in the opposite direction. So, instead of he and I working only 5 minutes apart in Williamsburg, he'll be in Richmond. But when you are looking at

• a 25%+ pay raise(if he hadn't been making less than the national average salary for his position, it would have been smaller),
  
• good health insurance (Blue Cross PPO vs. cheap, crappy insurance),
  
• 401k with matching (vs. unmatched with limited fund selection),
  
• the potential for an actual bonus (instead of profit sharing "whenever we feel like it" into the 401k),
  
• a really interesting job without the requirement that he wear a button down shirt on a regular basis,

that distance really isn't important (especially since we don't have to move and I won't have to leave the job I love that took me forever to find!).

I certainly can do no more than to support him in something he is so excited about. Of course, I'm going to miss our occasional lunches together- but that's not enough reason for him to keep working somewhere he dislikes.

So, my question is: do you like your job? If yes, is there a specific thing, or is it hard to articulate? If no, what would you rather be doing?


*This could be a slight exaggeration. There have been some good moments along the way, but the bad is very much outweighing the good right now.
**Ironically enough, this realization came after participating in a management training program paid for by the company. Of course, the people who need to attend the program never do.