Hey lemmy, I just want to share that I'm getting a new job!
I'm located in East Asia, in a country that is not really recognized as a country (easy guess isn't it?). But I'm actually from South East Asia.
So after getting a bachelor's degree in mechE, I work in a local manufacturing company, supplying the Auto industry. The company's making pretty good money and probably has a pretty bright future, but the management and mindset is so...Asian.
Cheap. Everyone works overtime, managers get verbally abusive at times. Our laptops are old enough to go to middle or high school. The ERP (enterprise resource planning) software has 5s+ lag every page refresh, and is limited to 40 users at a time (for 150+ employees at the office).
I'm making about +45% national minimum wage, which is not bad, but considering that I'm their best English speaker, I work 1 hour more everyday (without pay) , taking over technical meetings with customers (other engineers don't really speak English), it's pretty low.
Then, about 2 years in, I started to look for a new job, but as usual, it's hard and involves a lot of ghosting.
Then I saw a chat in Linkedin, from a headhunter offering 60% more base pay for the same job title as my current job! I knew I'm being underpaid, but I didn't think it was by that much.
I was looking for a full engineering role though, so I ignored that HH, but then another HH approached me and I did several interviews, and BAM! They want to give me an offer, and it was almost 85% more than my current. AND it's 20% more than what I asked them! Maybe I have a habit to undervalue myself, and this company refuses to use that against me.
So I told my manager I'm quitting, he was calm and collected, but I can see a little bit of shock. He said he's "confident that he can give me a 30% raise", and I had to refuse him three times in that conversation. I was so nervous that I barely can form proper sentences, especially that we're conversing in my 3rd language. My colleagues have been very nice to me, and very appreciative, but not the company. Honestly, I was also heartbroken to leave.
So I'll start in a couple months, will have to relocate to another city 300km away, I'll have to find a new place to rent. Will have to adapt to a new city and build a whole new routine. I'll travel a lot on weekends because my GF still lives in my current city.
I'm excited about all the possibilities, and anxious about the expectations.
And speaking of expectation, the head of a department in the new company will travel from Europe HQ for 2 weeks to orient me, a buddy also will also be temporarily relocated to accompany me later on, for a longer period. Is this even the norm in big international companies? Is this a European thing? Excited but I'm starting to fear the extent of their expectation.
And I'm super worried if this doesn't work out. My exit from the current company hasn't finalized yet, and I haven't signed a new rent. I will have to get a new work permit as well...
Anyway, it's interesting how a path opened up for me in a bizarre way. Like, I wasn't seeking them out and except for my preparation for the interviews, it felt almost "easy" (the feeling is most probably biased because the effort was in the past and now I'm looking at the result).
So... a new journey ahead, and I hope it works out well for those who's struggling right now.
That's all folks! Have a great day y'all!
In Indonesian, there's an idiom "guru kencing berdiri, murid kencing berlari" which literally translates to teacher pee standing, students pee running. Meaning that students/followers learn not only good examples but the bad as well, and will one day be better at it than their predecessors.