Your employer is pressuring you to accept a change from Division 1 to Division 2. You know and respect the people you’d be working for in Division 2, but for whatever reason you would prefer not to work in that Division. But you’re unwilling to quit without another job, so you open contact with another firm.
It would hardly be practical to tell your current employer that you’re willing to accept the transfer if you fail to get offers from other companies. So that leaves 2 other options.
[ol]
[li]You keep pushing them off by telling them you’re thinking it over and similar, and then quit if you get a good offer from another firm.[/li][li]Accept the transfer and then quit when you get a good offer from another firm.[/li][/ol]
The disadvantage of the second option is that you’d be wasting a lot of time for the people in Division 2, who would have to set you up and rearrange workflow and whatever else in order to accomodate and integrate you, while all along you’re planning to skip out at first opportunity.
OTOH, if you keep telling the Division 2 people that you’re thinking it over they can get frustrated upfront, and then when they find out that you were stringing them along the whole time, they might be even more ticked off.
That’s sort of tough. I’d push them back as long as it was practical, but accept the transfer before I’d quit with no backup. Is staying in Division 1 an option at all, and does your boss know that’s your preference?
Really the answer depends on the timeframes. If you are going to have a new job in a month, you might want to just push them off. If it will take 6 months or longer to secure a new job, you might want to consider the move to Division 2.
Why do you care if they are “ticked off”? They will be ticked off regardless because you have thrown down their shackles of servitude. But people quit all the time.
Be straight. Tell your employeer that you will not accept the transfer to Division 2, and you want to remain in division 1. If they value you as an employee, they will leave it at that. If they refuse to honor your request, issue the ultimatum that you will not continue employement with div. 2.
From a purely technical standpoint, it’s possible - it’s being offered as a suggestion rather than an imperative. But it’s not realistically viable. This is a competitive situation with wide variation in bonuses, salaries etc. Once you turn down a move the company has suggested would be in everyone’s best interests, you will be judged very harshly thereafter, and any obstacles you face will be your own fault for having turned down the proposed transfer.
Agreed. But you don’t know upfront.
They are nice people who you don’t want to offend. Plus, it’s a small world, and you never know if you will run into them again.
I think situations like this are why it’s helpful to have etiquette and protocol. There are good arguments for either side. But ultimately what you owe your employer is two weeks’ (or whatever you agreed to in your contract) notice.
Honesty? Sure, you owe them honesty, in the lack-of-fraud sense. But you don’t owe them the internal workings of your decisionmaking process.
I think I’d handle it as follows:
Tell my employer I’d be happier if there’s any way I can stay in Division 1.
If my employer chooses to transfer me anyway–exercising their prerogative to run the business how they’d like–I’ll exercise my prerogative to seek another job.
It is always a risk that an employee will find another job, or will quit for another reason. That’s part of the cost of doing business. And resenting a co-worker who accepts a different job but offers to work out his or her notice is unprofessional, IMO.
I assume you’ve told them that you’d rather stay in Division 1, while not knocking Division 2 at all. If they ignore your wishes and try to transfer you there anyway, don’t delay too much (it is not like anything is going to change) but leave when you have a new job.
First, you might decide you love it there. If not, you can’t be too worried about them changing things for you, since you didn’t initiate the move. (Begging for a change and then leaving is a dick move - leaving after you have been moved under protest is not.) If they have any brains at all, they should consider the possibility of you leaving. Maybe they’ll listen the next time.
I agree with this. Issuing an ultimatum will translate to “please fire me now and do your best to ensure I don’t get unemployment or a good reference”.
If what you’re doing doesn’t break your contract, then you should go ahead and do it if it’s in your best interest. Your employer wouldn’t hesitate to screw you over in “technically contract” ways.
Agreed that anything you say to them that involves you quitting translates to “please fire me now”.
You are making a business decision. If you show up at division 2, work well and treat others well, nobody will hold a grudge. They’ll understand that it’s just business. If you show your hand, and they decide to show you the door, and the other firms don’t come through, you’ll have harmed yourself.
Definitely true of “my employer”, but my employer is not one monolithic entity.
The specific people involved here are fine people who have never done me any harm and I have no reason to think they would.
I am not worried about the poor poor corporation suffering. I am worrying about the individuals who are being jerked around, one way or another, and I’d like to choose the path that minimizes this to the greatest extent.
If they don’t respect your desire to stay in Division 1, accept the offer for Division 2, while you are looking elsewhere. Don’t tell your employer anything about your plans. They are not entitled to know what your plans are, they certainly aren’t filling you in on all of theirs. If this negatively impacts other employees, that is the employer’s problem, not yours. They should have forseen this as a possible result of *their *decision. If those other employees are worth caring about they will be happy if you find a new position more to your liking.
Look, your company thinks you’d be more useful in Division 2, which is their right. You prefer to be somewhere else rather than Division 2, that’s your right. As long as you do your job when there and do your best to not leave loose ends when you leave, you are not jerking anyone around. I’ve been around long enough to have had plenty of people quit on me, and to see plenty of people leave other groups to come to mine. No one felt jerked around so long as it is done professionally. We are not slaves, and we all get to take vacation and even retire eventually, even if it would be simpler for our bosses and colleagues if we didn’t. Very few of us are all that important. Don’t worry about it.
There’s a difference between going about doing your business while secretly making arrangements to quit, and actively discussing your possible future role at Division 2, with the people from Division 2, while omitting the fact that you might leave altogether.
Division 2 can survive without me. But the people running it are going to waste a lot of time either in discussions with or about me, and/or awaiting my decision, or in planning for my participation, e.g. reallocating projects etc.
You haven’t been campaigning to go to Division 2, have you? You got ordered to? And your management knows you don’t want to go, right? Of course I bet they’ve never bothered to tell this to Division 2 management - unless they are both under the same person.
I see you’ve got a few options here.
you can work with them to the best of your ability, and do the best job you can while looking for another job. This seems to be what you are doing. You might discover the place isn’t that bad, or you may give up looking, in which case everyone is ahead.
You can quit now. Doesn’t jerk them around, but not so hot for you.
You can resist the move and not show up to meetings and stuff. I doubt you want to do that.
You can whine at the top of your lungs about not wanting to go. That will make people dislike you, and even if they change their minds you’ll have a bad reputation. Not good for anyone.
To be complete, you can issue an ultimatum, but that may reduce to choice 2.
You can just grin and bear it, and be unhappy. Might make them happy for now, but you won’t be doing your best so it isn’t good for anyone.
Yeah, but you’re already planning to quit and move elsewhere, and are really only debating which lie to tell / avoid telling in the meantime. If you’re already working towards moving on from there, does it matter if your job becomes a dead-end one? Presumably you won’t be staying there any longer than you have to, regardless whether you accept the transfer or not, and neither will you really enjoy either job… although you may enjoy your current duties, if not your prospects, a bit more in the interim.
On the other hand, maybe you’re worried that they’ll figure out you’re planning to leave because they know you’re not naive enough to turn down a transfer if you’re planning to stay? (If that’s the case, can you pretend to be that naive? )
And nothing might come through at another firm. As msmith537 says, do what you would do if you were continuing to work there and I assume that means picking up on the cue that they would really really like you to transfer.
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