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The 1st gig (lower paying) is for business software company. I would be able to do 100% development work immediately. Permanent position. Would never have to report to an office. I would be working with a team of 10 other experienced software engineers...all of whom work remotely.
Looked at the careers page and noticed that there are several senior engineer positions currently available. Established company.
If the pay were $5k higher I wouldn't even think twice about taking the job.
Hope this bit helps.
The issue with working remotely and also working with other experienced in same roll. There is zero hand holding. They expect you to figure everything out on your own. I am in this role and the newbies sink quickly. They get stuck for hours or days on things that the highly experience folks figure out quickly because of their vast experience. The newbies take too much time to do stuff because they get stuck and also the newbies need lots of hand holding for same reason. I have seen 1 get fired and one get transferred to a lower level team because these newbies couldn't cut it.
When you are new - working in the office might be a good idea since you can gain lots of tips and insight by talking with others in the office. Remote workers do their work and work very fast and they don't mess around with chit chat or mentoring. At least this is what I have seen.
So, IMO, though working remotely is awesome, I think you might be too inexperienced to wing it at this point in your career. You would become frustrated with yourself and you might fall behind in your work and eventually get fired. Even if you are highly intelligent and a hard worker.
Therefore, I suggest you take the in-office position and gain entry into healthcare IT which you want. And then you will be making more money from the start. Who knows, in this position maybe you start working from home 1 day a week after several months and maybe 2 days a week after awhile. You would be surprised how this happens but you have to feel out the place for awhile and prove your worth there (very important).
Once you get more experience, you can focus on getting a remote position a few years from now. Right now you need to grow your skills and get more experience. I also think healthcare IT is a great field and something excellent to specialize in. I also like that you will be working with the users because this is also some great experience that will help you in the future.
With the healthcare IT job, your salary goal for next few years is easily attained. Then you focus on getting remote work later, which will naturally fall into place. But you need to experience first and foremost. Don't take the cart before the horse because it might set you back.
In your position I would take job number 2. It is what you have been trying to move your career towards. You will be making more money, working in the field you wanted and a lot more networking opportunities.
It's a close call when you factor in everything, whichever job you think truly benefits you advancing your career long-term, I'd go with that one. What I specifically mean is gaining skills. I'm guessing the remote job is probably the one. Whichever you one you decide, it sounds like you have great opportunities ahead of you. The biggest problem with 100% remote jobs is typically lack of advancement as all they know is your work and not you as a person, which helps you in networking.
^^ This. Look at the bigger picture. I wouldn't discount the immediate benefits (that's a personal thing, so you need to figure what works for you. As nice as it sounds, there are people who simply can't do well working in a remote environment), but since you are somewhat early in your career, I would place a bigger emphasis on the long term goals.
Congratulations on your job offers! I find commuting very frustrating personally, but we have horrible traffic here in Houston. What should be a 1 hour commute can easily become twice that due to car accidents, road construction, and slowdows caused by mysterious causes. So the state has solved our traffic woes by building more and more toll roads, which has ironically only made things worse, since the majority of drivers then avoid these roads, adding to traffic backups on the free ones, because they don't want to pay an additional $5+ each way just to get to and from work. Remember that the extra $13K from the second job isn't just money in your pocket because you will be spending two extra hours out of your life every day commuting (or about 552 extra hours per year, assuming it's an 8-5 job M-F). Then as others have said, there is wear and tear on your car, additional car repairs, etc. Then balance those extra hours expended by your ultimate career goals and which position can best meet these.
Definitely would go with the WFH unless you absolutely cannot make it on $55k. The flexibility is something you can't necessarily put a dollar value on.
Fantastic comments everyone. Extremely insightful. Will make sure to send you an update as soon as I make a final decision.
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