NaBloPo: My Cheatin' Heart

Hey Friends, we're kickin it old school tonight with a no pictures post! I'm fresh off a job interview and processing some things.

For all things NaBloPo head over to The Inbetween in Mine 

Just to catch you up, my work sitch is that I worked for a long time for a wonderful company that got acquired and eaten alive by Big Corporate.  When it got bad I got out, and my current job had a bit of a rocky start that had me looking for something else after six months.  While I was looking things slowly got better so I decided to stay put.  And then out of nowhere a company contacted me and asked me to interview with them so I decided that there was no harm in flirting...

Also I don't think that I've talked about this on the bloggo before, but when I started my career I was a die hard loyal employee.  I hated my job but I stayed with the company for double-digits in years because I thought that's what people did.  I got screwed over when the company was acquired and found myself unemployed at the start of the Great Recession, so that's the underlying thing that has me ready to hit the door every time someone looks at me funny at work.

Here's what I know so far about the new place on the scale of things that I said I was looking for in a new gig.  BTW "BPTW" means Best Place to Work, which means that one of the business objectives is to give a good employee experience.

Pros of current gig: 

• I love, love, love my boss and my boss's boss.
• Work life balance is good.  I rarely have to work outside of 8 to 5 and take a full lunch break/dog walk every day.
  
• The short term projects are interesting (a bunch of equity stuff from the company going private, getting to take over for my boss while she's on maternity leave).
• Yes I *could* make more $$$ elsewhere but what I got ain't shabby.
  

Cons of current gig:

• Outside of my team, there are a lot of not-nice people, particularly in US leadership.
  
• While the company does a lot of good stuff for employees, they can be pretty crummy when they want to be.  Layoffs galore, salary cuts during COVID, etc.
• Workload is way higher than it needs to be due to manual processes and a lack of technology AT A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY.
• Way too heavy a focus on accounting and too little on payroll.
  
• The company was recently acquired and it's unknown how that's going to play out.  So far it's layoffs and cutting costs, but then again that's every company right now.
  
• What am I doing here long term?  Short term we're good but what I am going to move into after the boss comes back?  There's a high likelihood that I'll be hitting the streets next fall looking for a new gig.

What I know so far about Cool Startup:

• Cool startup vibezzzz!!!!  I've missed that so much every since Big Corporate moved in.
  
• I always ask people why they came to work for the company and what they like most about it.
• Recruiter: "this is a place where I am valued for being myself"
• Manager: "I love the remote first mentality.  I'm able to work on my own time zone without having to be online 24/7"
• They're not into doing stuff manually.  They're setting up Big Tech for accounting and payroll which means that I get to be hands on instead of doing everything in Excel.
• The "day in the life" is exactly what I want to be doing.  I'm into working with systems and talking to people, not doing accounting all day.
• I like the supervisor.
• Red flags so far: zero apart from the fact that there has been no discussion of salary expectations.
  
• Status: moving on to the next round of interviews.
  

So that's all I've got.  I won't cry if I don't get this job and yes I feel bad for "cheating" but...oh my I am sure being tempted to stray.