I’ve been offered the office job twice in my life now. I’ve always worked in a shop in industrial electrical manufacturing and field service. The first time was my old job, I ended up quitting entirely and walking out on a promotion for drafting, which paid less than my current job’s base salary and which has just exploded with raises, bonuses, overtime, double time on Sundays. I’m pretty happy where I’m at. But now my boss just mentioned there’s something available in the office at the end of the year and he’ll keep me in mind.
I’m kind of at a crossroads. Do I keep the job I physically enjoy doing more and keeps me busy and on my feet and hanging out with people who I enjoy their company? Or do I take the job which is gonna be a lot more boring, a lot of killing time, with relatively boring strangers, but would push me a lot into more knowledge and skills? And I’m genuinely interested in the field and want to learn more and apply myself, but I’ve never been someone who could sit at a desk all day. I’ve never had a job like that. But also I’m starting to outgrow my current position and it does get awfully repetitive testing and doing QA all day. I told him I’d think on it.
Keep in mind that more physically demanding jobs wear your body down faster. And if you took the office job and it wasn’t your cup of tea, how difficult would it be to go back to your current position?
My wife turned down an office promotion but negotiated basically all the pay and benefits of it to keep her current role, maybe you could give that a shot?
So my old job involved a lot of lifting heavy shit, drilling & fabricating, installing / bending heavy power wire and conduit. Where I’m at now is honestly pretty low stress on my body. I’m on my feet all day but it’s testing / QA. It’s honestly more paperwork of writing reports, testing, and half the time the field service is programming anyway. Also a lot of maintenance crews will do the heavy lifting on site.
So it’s a bit of a moot point in that regard.
If I left this position I doubt I could ever go back. They’d need to replace me with whoever I trained to take my place. We’d have to get sooo much more busy to justify more than two people in my current department.
I’ve been offered the office job twice in my life now. I’ve always worked in a shop in industrial electrical manufacturing and field service. The first time was my old job, I ended up quitting entirely and walking out on a promotion for drafting, which paid less than my current job’s base salary and which has just exploded with raises, bonuses, overtime, double time on Sundays. I’m pretty happy where I’m at. But now my boss just mentioned there’s something available in the office at the end of the year and he’ll keep me in mind.
I’m kind of at a crossroads. Do I keep the job I physically enjoy doing more and keeps me busy and on my feet and hanging out with people who I enjoy their company? Or do I take the job which is gonna be a lot more boring, a lot of killing time, with relatively boring strangers, but would push me a lot into more knowledge and skills? And I’m genuinely interested in the field and want to learn more and apply myself, but I’ve never been someone who could sit at a desk all day. I’ve never had a job like that. But also I’m starting to outgrow my current position and it does get awfully repetitive testing and doing QA all day. I told him I’d think on it.
Keep in mind that more physically demanding jobs wear your body down faster. And if you took the office job and it wasn’t your cup of tea, how difficult would it be to go back to your current position?
My wife turned down an office promotion but negotiated basically all the pay and benefits of it to keep her current role, maybe you could give that a shot?
So my old job involved a lot of lifting heavy shit, drilling & fabricating, installing / bending heavy power wire and conduit. Where I’m at now is honestly pretty low stress on my body. I’m on my feet all day but it’s testing / QA. It’s honestly more paperwork of writing reports, testing, and half the time the field service is programming anyway. Also a lot of maintenance crews will do the heavy lifting on site.
So it’s a bit of a moot point in that regard.
If I left this position I doubt I could ever go back. They’d need to replace me with whoever I trained to take my place. We’d have to get sooo much more busy to justify more than two people in my current department.