Author: Kyle

I’m a member of the site LinkedIn, which is much like Facebook for business. I have a number of former colleagues on there, and occasionally get messages from recruiters looking for talent. Back in February, one such situation came up, where a recruiter said their security company was looking to open a center in Utah, and they noticed my experience at Symantec and wanted me to interview at the company.

As I never turn down chances to interview, I agreed and spoke to them over the phone. I must have impressed them, as they wanted to set up multiple interviews with me and different people within the company. However, these were all over the phone, as they were all out of Utah. After two phone interviews with different techs in the company, they asked if I’d be able to come in for an interview when they were in Utah. The dates didn’t work out, since we were in California at the time, so we did another phone interview with the vice president over the support group.

They ended up offering me a job, right at the time I started at Venafi. The timing on it couldn’t be worse, I felt, as I had just started at Venafi and I had no reason to leave. Even though the position paid more, I felt I reached a point where I didn’t need the extra money, so I mentioned it to my Venafi vice president, who tried to help me see evenly what the difference was between going and staying. I ultimately decided there was no reason to leave yet, so I turned it down. The vice president told me I was the first person to turn them down, and offered to bump up the offer even more, but in the end, I decided to stick it out at Venafi.

After working at Symantec for six years, it felt really strange to say my final goodbyes. I’m not one for sentiment at work, so when I got choked up and had issues responding to people, hopefully they didn’t take offense and think that I was trying to brush them off.

I spent my last day at work trying to catch up on all the cases I had, trying to get through the final points of them so I could feel I did my best before handing them off. I think part of me was also in denial about leaving. When word started getting around that I was leaving, and people started coming over to say goodbye, I accepted that I was really going to leave that day and started packing. I surprised myself with how much I had collected over the years of being there, and had to make a couple trips out to the car with everything. I think a good sign of being trusted at the company was that my manager and his manager both left before I did, so I was practically on my own to leave the building my final time. After I triple-checked I cleaned out as much as possible, I left my badge with a former manager, and left for the last time.

When I got home, Rebecca had a large fruit basket waiting for me. She informed me about it earlier, but didn’t check the card. It turns out Venafi was so excited to have me come on board, they sent this out in welcome. It was a nice distraction from my absentminded thoughts about leaving Symantec.

So, before we left for North Carolina, I got a job offer over the phone for a new company, with the understanding that I would get an official offer by email the next day. I didn’t want to mention anything to my manager about it, until that offer came. Of course, I left work early to get to the airport, before the email ever arrived. I didn’t get the offer until we got to the airport, and I didn’t want to deal with it during the chaos of travel. That night, I emailed my manager and told him I got another job offer, and asked if Symantec would try countering this soon after my last offer. He replied back and confirmed that they wouldn’t try to counter again, asking me to let him know my decision. I emailed the manager of the other company and explained I was out of state, with limited internet access, and asked for his patience until I returned. He agreed.

I noticed that for the last job offers, I felt more apt to leave when I was away from the office, and more reluctant to leave once I got into the normal routine in the office. Having a week away to think about things helped me be more objective, even though it was still a difficult decision. When we returned home and I got back to Symantec, I slipped back into feeling scared of a change. However, one of the managers was best friends with the new position’s manager, and told me a lot about him. With this positive endorsement in mind, I started considering what it would be like to leave.

When the HR rep from the new company called me around lunch time, I told her I accepted the position. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the last day, hoping I can endure.

Back when I passed my resume along for the my previous “Opportunities” post, I had also sent it to another former coworker who went to a small company called Venafi. He explained that they had a support team and were looking to fill some positions, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a talk with them and see if they would be interested. A few months had passed with my hearing nothing, and I figured they weren’t interested. Then this coworker sent me a message one day, asking if I ever heard from the manager, and I told him I hadn’t, and the next thing I knew was they were contacting me for an interview.

This afternoon I went into their office in Sandy, near the South Towne Mall, and had quite an interesting interview with a few members of their management. They were impressed with the experience I had on my current product, as their software offers management of security certificates, and I was one of the only candidates that had actually set up a server environment to create these, so I understood much of the terminology they used, and felt comfortable with the environment and people I spoke to. It was different, or maybe I’m just feeling more confident?

Anyway, this evening I got a call back from the manager, offering me a job. During the interview, when he asked how much I was making, I decided to include my additional perks, like company stock I was going to get this year, so when he made the offer, it was actually comparable with the number I gave him. He said to think it over and he would send me an official offer by email tomorrow.

Why do I let myself get into these situations?