I need some advice. I’m in my thirties, married with two kids, and have been at my current place for 7 years. I have 10 total years of experience as a project engineer. This isn’t really important information but does give you background.
My current place of work has been having some problems. There’s issues paying bills and people are leaving in droves. I’m ready to go. In fact, I’ve been looking off and on for the past 4 years. In that time, I’ve gotten 4 job offers from various places, with the most recent coming through yesterday. So far, I haven’t taken any of them, all for various reasons. Regardless, I’m really excited about the offer I just got. The company has great growth potential, they have a ton of work ready to do and I just have a lot of warm fuzzies about all the people I met while interviewing. There’s two problems though. One, this position would be contract for one year before going direct. Two, I would have to move.
Now, during this time, my husband has also had issues with his current employer. They are a very small company, having sometimes only 3 employees. Right now, they have 5 employees. Nearly every day, my husband comes home bitching about one thing or another. Often, the parts weren’t ordered or the parts that did get ordered were bad in the box. He was ready to leave a couple months ago but stopped looking for a new job when I started looking myself.
Now I tried very hard to find a job where we live. My education is in chemical engineering and the Detroit area isn’t a chemicals heavy place. I didn’t want to have to move us but we talked about that being on the table the whole time. In fact, I tried to make sure our move would put us within spitting distance of my parents so that at least it would be a net positive for us all. The new place would be 1 hour from my parents. This is especially helpful as my daughter has autism and she does really great with my parents.
When I first talked to my husband about the job offer, my husband seemed to have decided that he wants to stay with his current place. When talking to his boss about leaving, his boss said that he was going to announce at Christmas that he wants to retire and would be passing ownership of the shop to my husband and my husband’s coworkers. Now my husband doesn’t want to move and I also don’t want to take him away from a great opportunity though none of these promises have been detailed in writing. My husbands most recent solution is that I would take our youngest and move in with my parents to work out the contract period. If it works out, then we would move to a point half way between his place and my new place, with about 3-4 hours of daily commute for each of us.
So my questions are -
Is the solution my husband proposed even workable?
Am I being unreasonable about wanting this new job?
A 3-4 hour daily commute wouldn’t be feasible for my wife or me, particularly in the mid-west, where the weather can be miserable during the winter months. You could try it for a year, but that would mean splitting up the family.
You both should sit down and look at the big picture. If staying with his current company means a huge payoff down the road, then perhaps you should stick it out where you are. Moving might make sense if you bring in more money than he is likely to make.
It sounds like a crapshoot, either way, so talk through all of the options and see which one is most likely to lead to a better future for everyone involved. Don’t feel like you have to make your decision quickly. Take the time you need to figure out what makes sense for your family, no matter how long that takes.
This, to me, is important. You have a job offer in-hand, he does not. While it appears like a good opportunity to take over the business, what if you pass on the job offer you like, and the whole deal at his work falls-thru for some reason? You’d be back to job-hunting.
I guess it comes down to how much you want the job you have just been offered, vs the chances the “promise” he got comes thru. Maybe waiting to see what happens at his work is worth the risk - maybe not?
Only you can answer that. One big question is, however, what happens if it doesn’t work out? What is your Plan B if things go ass over appetite halfway through the experiment? Or after your year you decide it wasn’t worth it? Can you return to your old job and simply pick up where you left off? If not, then what happens?
Again, only you can answer that. But there’s few things out there more soul-destroying than a crappy job.
The fact that your company is having problems paying the bills is a HUGE red flag. What happens when they can’t make the payroll?
If parts aren’t being ordered or being ordered from unreliable suppliers on a regular basis with no effort to remedy these issues then there’s some incompetence somewhere up the line. Staying with a job only because there’s a handshake-only promise of acquiring the company from someone who apparenlty can’t run it well would not be something I would do, personally.
Also, “passing ownership” likely means giving your husband et al. first right of refusal. I do not know anything about owning or operating businesses but I assume that means that your husband (and his coworkers) would be taking on debt to buy the company – the current owner would be selling, not giving it away is my default assumption. If that is true are you two prepared to take on that risk and financial burden? Does your husband get along with his coworkers so well that he’s willing to go into debt with hem? Does he trust them to successfully co-own a company with them? It certainly is worth a discussion.
3 hours of commute each day would be brutal. If you’re driving it, consider the wear and tear on your car, the increase in fuel expenses, oil changes, the need for new tires every 6 months… I have a 45 minute commute to work each way and the drive, which is almost exclusively rural mountain roads, is about the max I can handle and that’s with no traffic or similar city distractions. I have to rotate my tires and change the oil every 6 months and consumables like windshield wipers and washer fluid are used up like there’s no tomorrow – I keep spares of both in the trunk because I tend to suddenly need them outside of my usual routine maintenance visits. Simply put, unless you take public transport a long commute is expensive. I work with a guy who drives 150 miles each way to work. 300 miles a day. He goes through 4 tanks of gas a week. For him that’s $900 per month just in gasoline. That is absolutely beyond ludicrous to me.
And in your situation it sounds like those expenses, whatever they work out to be, would be doubled.
For me, this would be the deal breaker. I would probably consider leaving a job that I don’t like for a one-year contract, but I would never relocate my family on something so up in the air.
So the agency the company is working through only does contract to hire. However, the company assured me and showed me with the work they have available that they have well more than a year of work to do and that they don’t want to hire someone to work so short a time.
Additionally, that part of the country has more opportunities for me in terms of chemical companies.
Just a note.
Thanks for the other replies so far. I have a lot to think about.
Well if he’s going to just give it to them, then it’s not probably worth much, if anything. Or is he going to sell his business to your husband? How much? Do you guys have the capital to purchase it?
If it’s the former, why can’t your husband just start this business in a new location where your new job would be located?
I don’t know the details of how this would go down. My husband made it seem like money would not be changing hands but, with further thought, it obviously can’t work that way. And we definitely don’t have the capital to purchase it.
So the reason he wouldn’t just open a new business is that he currently restores Corvettes. The business relies on word of mouth and prior reputation and it would be hard for him to get it running without the name recognition the current shop has.
Start looking for homes in the new location with garage space. Your husband can freelance fix/restore from home as a side job and be the main caretaker for your daughter. People have cars and old Corvettes all over the country. If he can work on cars he has VERY transferable skills.
Take the new job and try to persuade your husband that he’d be better off starting his own business in the new location. Don’t even consider the long commute, it would be hell.
Slalexlan: first you should tell your prospective employer that you’re really interested, but cannot uproot your family and move with one year probation. You either sweeten the offer to a full time employee position, or so sorry but it’s going to be really difficult to accept although I really think this is a great fit.
Second, I have a child on the autism spectrum. Not sure what that means in your child’s situation as it is a broad spectrum. I would double check the schools and services in the State you will move to. Being near grandparents can be invaluable in this situation.
Third, a 3-4 hour commute for both of you is insane. Sorry, even for one of you that would be insane and simply not workable for more than a month or three.
Fourth, I would suggest your husband have a heart to heart with his boss. What exactly is being proposed? Willing to draw up legal documents? It could be the boss man wants out but keep a “cut” of the revenue and/or profit. Kind of a slow buy-back. Maybe he is a generous soul that simply wants his business to live on. Regardless, a legal document is needed to make an informed decision.
My husband and I talked all evening about this. He really wants to stay with his current job. His boss told him that details of his promotion/ownership change, won’t be ready until the end of the year and my prospective employer cannot wait that long for me to answer. On top of that, the prospective employer is completely unwilling to provide any relocation assistance or do anything officially about the contract period. (Unofficially, the contract can be bought out at 6 months, but no one will put that in writing.)
With all that you gave me to think about and the talks with my husband, I decided to turn it down. I did let him know how hard it is for me to do this but I also don’t want us separated for months to years while we figure out if his current job is that great of a deal.
I hate it but I’m also at peace, which makes me think that this is the right call.
the reputation (which is based on the knowledge of the owner and the workers)
the tools etc.
The tools have an obvious value, but they may well have been depreciated enough that on paper, they aren’t worth a whole lot.
The reputation: there are ways of assigning value to that, for accounting purposes, though I don’t know them. But if the company transfers over to workers who’ve been there for a while, that means the knowledge stays right there.
All in all, transferring the business to the employees may not be a big deal, cash-wise.
It’s certainly worth your husband having a talk with the owner to get a feel for just what the owner has in mind. And also: of the employees, who if anyone has the skills to handle the management / admin side of things?
Reading the rest of the thread, sounds like the prospective move is no longer a concern.
The contract can be bought out whenever they feel like it.
I think you made the right decision. Personally I think “contract to hire” jobs are bullshit. The reason they have them (particularly for engineers) is that companies often have projects where they need highly technical (and often expensive) resources for a short to medium term (maybe up to a few years at most). That’s fine and all, but I think the “to hire” part tends to be rare. Typically what I’ve seen is the company doesn’t have follow-up work once the project ends and has to release the consultants.
Which is not to say it couldn’t have been a good job in and of itself. But it’s not the sort of job where the hiring company plans to invest any time in your career and as there may not actually be a job beyond the next 1-2 years, it’s probably not worth uprooting your life for.
It’s very often the case that a business owner has an unrealistic estimate on what their business is worth. (“I built this business from the ground up! I know what it’s worth!!”) They convince the new owners to pay way too much for #1, and they end up bankrupt because their payments to the previous owner (or the bank if they take out a loan) exceed the income to the business. If you’re thinking about buying a business, you may want to hire a business consultant to come up with a realistic estimate on what the business is really worth. (And you might find the “reputation” value is next to nothing, and almost all the value is in the building, inventory, tools, equipment, etc.). And let’s not forget that the new owners are also responsible for any debt or loans.