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I got contacted by an other company and I am so unsure whether to accept their offer or stay at my current job.

For now I spend 2 years at my current company. The culture is great and everyone gets treated very well.
The bad part is, that it is located in a part of Germany I really can't stand and to this day fully remote is not an option.

Additionally lots of stuff is really frustrating in my daily work, e.g. colleagues that experiment with critical parts if our infrastructure, resulting in every developer who made the mistake to update the local development stack being unable to work for half a day or so.

This and the fact, that our techstack sucks hard. (mostly bad php for backend and server-rendered HTML and a weird mix of Typescript, Javascript, Vue and some old bits of deprecated angular for frontend). This company has it's own product (a web platform) and no real deadlines in the sense of "something bad happens, when your team won't achieve the project in the originally proposed time"

Company number two seems to work with a wide variety of technologies for very different projects (it's a consulting compan), would pay me ~28% more than my currently raised pay and allows for full remote.

When I try to look objectively on the facts everything points to accepting their offer, but on the other hand there is this weird feeling of this being a joice that would come to soon...

How do you make such decisions? I already talked to a great colleague of mine, who thinks it might not be a bad idea to stay at the company for an additional year or 2, because I haven't yet reached the point where there is not enough to learn here anymore, which I agree on, but this company seems to offer everything I want.

I feel overwhelmed with this situation :D that's why I would like to know how you people try to tackle such a situation

Comments
  • 3
    Imagine a party.

    You dance, but people behave like maniacs. You get elbows in places where elbows don't belong, some spill their drinks on you, etc.

    If now the recruiter of said company would come up and offer you a ride to a different party, would your instinct tell you: Fuck no, I don't wanna end as human lasagna in that guy's freezer?

    If not, and you have the necessary savings for an alternative if things go wrong... Better check out the different party. If it goes wrong, just try till it makes click.
  • 1
    Tough decision. I was in a similar situation and my reasoning back them was that I wanted something new. I had wonderful colleagues, but I was done with this place after having worked there for 4 years. So I switched jobs to practically exactly what you're describing and I still have great colleagues, but my work is completely different and a lot of fun. In this case I had also got the impression that this new place had a very nice company culture, something that is of high importance to me.
  • 1
    I've been working as a consultant for 7 years. Just keep in mind that it's comparatively a very competitive space and you are at higher risk of being fired if they can't sell you to a customer after a few months of being 'on the bench'. You do have more flexibility although (choosing to quit a project, "sign off on offers" that fit you) you could still end up in that part of Germany you don't like.

    I love variety and haven't looked at applying for a regular employee job. there are times when I feel fatigue of redeveloping the same thing in other techs, but it definitely keeps one in the loop of new tech. There will still be a good chance you encounter the frustrations you mentioned, only you won't be able to blame them on your employer but the customer
  • 1
    @ScriptCoded that's great, that it worked out for you.
    This new company too sounds like a nice work environment but it nevertheless feels like gambling. Eat makes me think positive is that my current company is known for being understanding towards its employees career wishes and most of the time welcomes people back.
  • 1
    @webketje thanks for your insights. I have no clear image of working for a consulting company.
    Since they do "scrum" (whatever that really means in reality :D) I imagined that you as a dev work on your stories that get planned and just have to deal communication with your colleagues, since you have a product owner to handle outside steakholders.

    This recruiter on the other hand told me that handling outside clients too would be part of my job. Could you explain a little bit more how working as a developer for a consulting company differs from working for a company with its its own web platform?
  • 1
    @Zugreisender From my experience (I work for a company and maintain a web platform)

    And clients using the system never have to call me. Or I have to call them. All handlings are internal and I report to sales/marketing for new features or bugs. (And yes, most stuff I hear is : the system is slow, I can't connect to it so your system is crap... But later it was a problem with the client's internet. Not my problem)

    On the other hand, as a consultant, you will have to listen to all the crap the client has and fix the system for them. Any problem the client has, will be your problem too.

    (All still related to what you implement)
  • 0
    @Grumm thank you :)
  • 0
    @Zugreisender haha everyone does scrum (their own way®): it could be truthful or complete BS. Depending on the clients you work for you could be staffed as different profiles according to how your skillset & prefs evolve. eg I've worked as FE dev, UX dev, PHP dev, fullstack JS dev, DevOps eng., coach, tech analyst, lead. Sometimes it's well-organized and you just flush JIRA tickets, sometimes you need to chase people to assemble the specs yourself.
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