Work From Home – Work Away From Home

I’ve discovered another job locally, that I think will be a bit more entertaining and interesting than my current role.

There are key differences to consider however, without even thinking of the pay rates or hours.

The current position:
– Is a client support position, meaning I ask the same questions and advise many of the same people the same things day in, day out.
– Is a busy position, many phone calls of support and sales nature, emails and follow up are needed in a day to assist in resolution of issues.
– Is boring.

The position is better than others in the same sort of industry and field in that when someone is asking for support, they generally need it – though a large percentage that do ask for it could solve the problem themselves. The pay is good, the job is work from home, meaning there’s no travel time wasted.

On an ongoing basis however, in order to complete the overdue tasks that I have assigned, it requires some overtime from time to time, therefore a 40 hour week can easily transition into a larger week on a regular basis.

The company is adding extra services from a different nation, where such support staff is approximately 1 to 4 (or even more). Simply, as an Australian support consultant, I couldn’t possibly compete with the wages. From a financial point of view, if I were the company owner, I would consider not continuing the employment of the Australian staff. However, there is one issue that would prevent taking out the Australian support staff, being that the staff in the other nation don’t always get the right response or right solution to the ‘obvious’ problems. Sure, Australian staff have similar issues, but the accuracy rate is far more accurate (however, I only have a top level overview of that to base that comment off).

The new job:
– is a role in systems administration and development.
– is expected to be far more interesting compared to support.
– is for a local company, so travel time, whilst required, is not far out of the question.
– has better hours compared to the current role.

Assuming I am successful for the upcoming interview, I’ve got a choice, a gambling decision if you will, of taking the new role and putting faith into the role being a successful position with a company that has been around for some time.

I’ve heard a rumour that the company I am currently with has never sacked anyone, and has plans for all staff in Australia – those plans do not obviously have a strong indication of ‘what that is’ – without knowing that, I have to gamble on what ‘plans they could have’ perhaps being more suitable for me.

I’m burnt out on support. I simply cannot tolerate supporting other people’s problems. I used to enjoy it, but I’ve been doing that for 4 years between a few different companies – the first role of support was fun, I enjoyed the company I worked for and helping wherever I could to make it grow.

The current company is a larger company, but still in business for a similar length of time, the company has more staff, and I don’t really care if it grows. I don’t like Sales, yet I’m forced to provide sales support to customers, that said, at the previous company, I’d have happily supplied Sales, Support and Faults advice all in the same hour.

I’m not happy in my current role, and with the imminent completion of the support services in the other nation, I’m not too sure what plans they have for me, and whether those plans will satisfy my desire to develop, rather than support.

I enjoy working from home – I don’t really care if it requires extra hours, but because I’ve always got access to family if I want to, and there’s no time lost in travel. But, if working from home is simply going to mean I continue working in a role that is not satisfying, then it’s probably best I do look at what else is available in the interests of personal happiness.

Working away from home – offers more advancement – the new role will be a true employment role in the area I enjoy, Systems Administration and Development. Having this role on my resume could assist further in advancing my career as opposed to simply having a company with a relatively big name on the resume.

I’ve got a big decision to make soon if I’m successful after interview, and that decision is likely to be unaffected even if the pay rate was lower.

I know of another individual in the company I currently work for, who joined a role shortly after I did, who gets in the order of 10K a year more than me, yet on many occasions I cross this persons work in the course of my duties and wonder – ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ – which adds more disappointment, another person gets paid more, to do the same job with poor quality.

There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of quality performance reviews done at the current company, meaning that this person could go on for an infinite amount of time, being paid significantly more, and from crossing paths with the activities they do, they do a poor job of it.

I’ll see what the interview holds and check out the pros and cons of it, but from the outset, the newer position looks more and more juicy by the minute.