Finally got an offer --- stay or go? (employee, average, alternative)

[AhRainess]

Sorry for the long post, but I have posted 3x on here voicing my frustrations about coworkers I work with.
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//www.city-data.com/forum/work-...coworkers.html
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I have a few updates and would like some of your opinions. After some praying, we recently hired a new employee to handle a large portion of work that I did. So far, he is nothing like the other two problem employees and have been very helpful to me in the few weeks that he's been here. After my 3rd post here, I applied for 4 jobs and got 3 interviews. One of them made me an offer today. However, the offer is more of a lateral position in pay and less responsibilities, and a less stellar
title. My current title is Operations Manager of a small 6-employee investment management firm that manages $1 billion AUM. The new or prospective employer is a 26-employee investment management firm that manages $1.6 billion and has multiple investment products and services. New title will be Portfolio Administrator (part of what I currently do). This week, I have to make a decision if I should leave my current good job with a growing firm for a different job and firm that is older and not growing as fast.

Current employer - the good:
1. Current pay is good and raises have been above average. Pay and bonuses have been the best I've ever had. I expect the pay to go into the six figures if the growth of the firm continues. I never thought I would reach there, but my current job/firm makes it seem more possible.

2. Current employer is flexible with my schedule especially with my 4 year old son, his school, etc.

3. Owners of the current firm are good to work with. Neve really had any major issues with them. They are unaware of the stress I go through though.

4. Current firm is growing and I have more responsibilities--something I never really had before. My current title is Operations Manager and that may be headed towards Director of Operations since our current head of operations lives out of state, and she is actually in charge of trading while I actually do most of the operations in the office.

5. I feel like I make an impact here, whereas in my past positions, they were less. Before this job, I was more of an admin. Being an admin is less stressful though.

Bads:
1. Coworkers - Two people who are at senior level and have more experience in investment management than me often demean my work and me. My background is more admin, but do operations management work. They work against me, pick on me, nothing I do is ever right, make up things about me, and my performance (reviews) are affected by what they say about me. I have a laundry list of the things they have done/said towards/about me. Often, it has kept me sleepless at night. It has affected my self esteem and my attitude at work and home. In the past, I've been used to being praised and appreciated by most people I work with, but I have never felt welcomed here.

2. The owners are very frugal so they are not willing to invest in technology and a better IT service provider. Unfortunately, I am in charge of IT. Working with the IT service provider we have has been a nightmare. He'll usually fix the issues, but getting any kind of response from him to complete a task usually involves me pulling out my hair. Owners won't change the service provider because current provider is affordable, but they do not know what I have to go through to get things fixed around here.

3. Only six employees total and two that affects me greatly and hard to work here with them. I think things will get better as we hire more people so I can ignore those two. The other firm has 26 employees and I actually get excited thinking I'll be working with more people (as I really miss that as well), but nothing is guaranteed that I won't run into similar issues over there with certain people. At least the new firm has more people and the people I interviewed with seemed ok. However, I'm good at reading people, and there seems to be shaky things going on over there (recent high turnover of people and loss of AUM). In the past when someone didn't like me, I just ignored them, but at my current firm, it's harder to ignore them due to the size.

4. The new job offer---I'm already at the top of their salary range for the position, and a pay increase isn't in the future. Bonuses are not guaranteed either. All other benefits are similar.

Overall, I like my current job. I just have to hang in there and continue to prove myself and outperform. I really want to buy my dream home in the next few years, and I can see that dream come true if I stay with my current job, but not with the new job.

I think I already know the answer, but your input from CD has always been helpful. Thank you.

[Chrisk327]

I'm surprised at a few things in this post.
1) if you're current coworkers are making you miserable, that its a question as to move or not.

2) you have AUM of $1B. I'm not sure what the firms take is on something like this, really depends on what you're doing as far as risk, hedge fund, alternative investments etc, success of portfolio but if you guys are clearing .5% that's 5M, if you're more in the 2% range you're at $20M. Point is, in a 6 person firm...... that is a LOT of money to go around. I'm sure there is overhead and I'm sure the "owner" takes a big chunk of that, but my guess is your 2 coworkers are likely instrumental in the operations and are most likely paid very well in comparison to you. I'm not saying its right, but they have the weight in the organization, not you. which would also push towards leaving.

3)Small places are tricky, they can be very good environments, or conversely, very bad environments. Throw in a LOT of money... can make things a lot worse. I audited a small investment company that did alternative investments managing a fund, it had a few really nice people and a few outsized personalities with large paychecks that threw their weight around and could make the place very very toxic at times.

4) IMHO titles in small places are very fuzzy. being the CFO of a 6 person operation or controller or operations manager or whatever, doesn't mean quite what it does in a larger place. If you're the driver of the business, in this case investments, and you have the 1B under management, that's impressive. If you're "support" its less so.

Having said all that, I don't quite understand your role as to whether this truly is a step down or not. How were the other interviews? is something coming from one of them? is this other company more respected/well known?

[joe from dayton]

Changing jobs does not mean that your "bads" are going to go away.

[AhRainess]

[quote=Chrisk327;33850127]

2) you have AUM of $1B. I'm not sure what the firms take is on something like this, really depends on what you're doing as far as risk, hedge fund, alternative investments etc, success of portfolio but if you guys are clearing .5% that's 5M, if you're more in the 2% range you're at $20M. Point is, in a 6 person firm...... that is a LOT of money to go around. I'm sure there is overhead and I'm sure the "owner" takes a big chunk of that, but my guess is your 2 coworkers are likely instrumental in the operations and are most likely paid very well in comparison to you. I'm not saying its right, but they have the weight in the organization, not you. which would also push towards leaving.

Profits are currently split 50/50 between the two owners, but I know the other two get paid very well. One of them gets a % of the AUM he brings in. The other employee was the firm's first employee, so owners are loyal to her and VV.

3)Small places are tricky, they can be very good environments, or conversely, very bad environments. Throw in a LOT of money... can make things a lot worse. I audited a small investment company that did alternative investments managing a fund, it had a few really nice people and a few outsized personalities with large paychecks that threw their weight around and could make the place very very toxic at times.

I make less than everyone in the firm, but feel like I do the most work. Even when they changed my title from Office Manager to Operations Manager, the other two employees got very jealous and even went up to the owners to complain. What happened? Their new titles were changed to Managing Directors.

Having said all that, I don't quite understand your role as to whether this truly is a step down or not. How were the other interviews? is something coming from one of them? is this other company more respected/well known?

I believe the new role is a step down in responsibilities, but hopefully with less stress and it will only be concentrating on something I like best about my current job (reconciling accounts and working with numbers as opposed to managing aspects of operations). Again, pay will be the same, but prospective employer basically told me I won't get a pay increase due to me being out of their range already. They say they're better with bonuses, but bonuses are never guaranteed. The prospective employer is also a local company and has been in business longer (since 1980) whereas my current employer has been in business since 2005, but the two owners of the current employer have been in the industry for over 20 years. The founder of the prospective employer retired last year, so they lost almost $1B in assets. Hiring manager told me nobody got laid off though; person I'm replacing got fired. I did not ask why.