Need Advice on Job Situation

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Hi All,</p>

<p>Not particularly sure where else to turn. </p>

<p>As a lot of you all know, my husband and I got married last January. I’m 26 and a graduate structural engineer with a prominent firm here in Houston, and I’ve been with them since October of last year, just before we got married. While my job is pretty high-impact and is one of the more stressful things I’ve undertaken, I’m constantly amazed that I get to work on the things I get to work on. My husband is a ABD (all-but-dissertation) PhD candidate in music composition.</p>

<p>As most ABD PhD students who aspire to be college professors do, my husband applies to every academic job that comes across the nets. Every application is a total long shot, with upwards of 150 candidates applying for each position, and there are very few positions. Only one has come along in the past six months that was applicable to his field and level of experience. Naturally, he applied. The job is in Utah.</p>

<p>They called him back and asked him for more information. A nibble! We were so excited.
They called him back and asked him for a phone interview. Wow, they’re actually interested…? Excited, but nervous.
They called him back again and told them they wanted to fly him out there. Petrified.
This evening, they called him and offered him a job. This is unheard of, and resulted in absolute terror, excitement, joy, despair, etc.
They want him to start next Monday, which made me cry.</p>

<p>We just got done with four years of long-distance relationship (five months of that was <em>after</em> we got married), and the prospect of separating again just makes me not want to eat.</p>

<p>Here are the bottom lines:

  1. I am in the middle of a project. I must stay here until February '09. There is no way around this, and I would never, ever leave my team or my company in the lurch. I don’t walk away from things half-finished.
  2. DH must take the job. The opportunity is too spectacular to pass up, and we both agree on this. He will be taking the job.</p>

<p>We’re not in dire straits without the money, and DH is going to try to get them to let him start in January, instead. (His first day of work would be our first wedding anniversary, and I would have to be here in Houston.) We’re not sure yet whether or not they’ll let him.</p>

<p>The college that has offered DH the faculty position is two hours from Las Vegas. We would gladly live in the middle of nowhere and each commute two hours a day in order to live with one another. The one catch is that work at the moment is fairly scarce, except in Houston-- so much so, that they’re sending at least one engineer from the Las Vegas office to the Houston office. I have concerns that they won’t let me transfer, since although people transfer fairly frequently within the company, the market’s a little tense, work’s a little light, and everyone’s a little stressed out.</p>

<p>I think I’m doing fairly well with the company. I’m not the fastest engineer in the office, but I’m known as a pretty sharp and very thorough young engineer who catches a lot of the faster engineers’ mistakes and asks good questions. I was recently told that I’d be one of five engineers in the company to be featured on the “Why Join Our Company? Ask Our Young Engineers!” site for this next year. Sooo… I’m fairly certain that they want to keep me around. (My one major corporate sin is that I frequently click over to BBC or CNN for a few seconds every half hour or so, just to make sure that the world hasn’t exploded, but I’m not sure anybody’s even noticed that.)</p>

<p>So, I, someone who hasn’t been with the company nearly long enough to really deserve anything, need to ask them for a transfer some time in March, so that I can actually live with my husband, and I am terrified and in need of some guidance as to 1) whether or not this is even a reasonable request, and 2) how to approach this. Do I ask HR for guidance? I like the HR people, and they like me… Do I approach my boss first? How do I do this?</p>

<p>I feel terrible for putting my company in this situation, but I can’t live apart from my husband indefinitely, and he has to take this job… Any advice, words of wisdom, or guidance, either from the point of view of a boss who might face this situation from the other side, or from the point of view of someone who can see themselves facing this sort of situation… Anything’s welcome. I’m still trying to sort this out in my mind.</p>

<p>Thanks, all.</p>

2

<p>I would definitely talk to your boss first. Nothing worse as a boss than having someone go over or around you and finding out 2nd hand. Tell him you are going to definitely stay to see your project through and that after that you would like to see if it is possible to get a transfer. I am sure he will appreciate you being up front with him. It is perfectly reasonable to ask. But don’t be to upset if they say it is not possible. You are not putting your company in any sort of situation they have not encountered before. They will not take it personally (or if they do you are better off elsewhere). Good luck.</p>

3

<p>I agree that you should talk to your boss first. Depending on what kind of relationship you have, you could present it as a request for advice, first emphasizing that you want to see your project through, then ask whether your boss would advise seeking a transfer in order to be closer to your spouse.</p>

<p>Was your H hired as a tenure-ladder hire or off-ladder? What kind of tenure prospects does he have (what is the department’s record of tenuring faculty from within its ranks?) It would be sad if you and he both moved to Utah and then found both of yourselves without a job and not much of a job market in a short period of time. Good luck!</p>

4

<p>Many newly weds and parents in China separate for long periods of time inorder to make a better future for themselves and their family. There is no easy solutions for you. </p>

<p>You or your spouse may not find Utah to be the ideal place to live. Try to tough it out for this academic year. Things may not work out for H in Utah, or your own job may not be long either. </p>

<p>Plane flights from Houston to LV are probably reasonably frequent and affordable. </p>

<p>Marriage anniversary is overrated. I remember the first time I saw Her, and the day we became intimate.</p>

<p>Congratulations to H on academic position.</p>

5

<p>I wouldn’t say anything yet to boss. He may just fire you now and find a replacement for the next 5 months. He can not take the chance that you quit when there is a deadline looming. Your integrity and loyalty has nothing to do with your situation.</p>

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<p>Longprime has a good point. It depends how far into the project you are. If you are well advanced and your role is crucial, it would be difficult to replace you. At the same time, it is a bit premature to be contemplating going to Utah before your H finds out how well he likes it there and what his long term prospects are.</p>

7

<p>This SO takes me back. DW was ABD PhD Candidate and was offered job with a Nobel Laureate clear across the country. DW’s parents called to say they’d just purchased the house next door to theirs as a graduation gift. (They didn’t give us a wedding gift – suppose that was a message of some kind? My parents weren’t all that thrilled with my choice of bride either.)</p>

<p>What got us through was focussing all our social energies on ourselves. What our friends and family members thought (and often said) was of zero consequence to us. If you can reach that rare place where “this is about us” then you will find the necessary accommodations to make the next couple of years work. Good luck with this.</p>

8

<p>We have had a few people with long-distance marriages in our group. Not having children yet made things easier. Sometimes the distance is short (Boston - New York), sometimes long (San Francisco - Boston). But people make do and it helps when there’s an end-point in sight.</p>

9

<p>I have to chime in here aibarr because women engineers a) have to stick together, b) have / are in a class by themselves usually and c) I hope you can make it all work.</p>

<p>(…note b meaning that the girl in the class is still often the only girl. and only in the office/project etc etc … besides the class of being smart enough to be an engineer)</p>

<p>First, congrats to H. Don’t forget that you and he are a team.</p>

<p>Second, ignor advice that says you can’t predict that the company might lay you off right away. NOT true.</p>

<p>Third, technical people often don’t have a bunch of networking/people skills to find out what the bosses will think before they make certain information public (ie will they fire me when they find out I am pregnant…) But you can try and nose around a little.</p>

<p>Fourth… do you belong to SWE? If not, well, I recommend it. Then if you are ask someone in YOUR area, both geographically and technically what the chances are for transfering.</p>

<p>Fifth (gak, I am stopping this numbering before I get to 1000!!!) YES, absolutely talk to your BOSS before HR. This would be harikari possibly if it comes from HR to him. And you CAN ask bosses, even jerks, what if xxxx. and if they are nice, then you can ask more specifically, WITHOUT even telling them what you are planning. A good engineer collects the requirements in detail before the design, right? In this case, what the company might do is part of your requirements for decision making. </p>

<p>You also need to build your ammo/case for whichever you want to do. Find out someone else commuted from Germany and it worked. Find out how much it will cost/save the company to keep you. Remind them that this will make you loyal/grateful and loyal/grateful employees who actually work are worth their weight in gold.</p>

<p>I’ve been a manager of engineers and was habitually surprised at what I could pry out of the company for other people. I was also surprised that they let me work part - time when I had kids. And still kept doing really interesting stuff. I just had to ask and I had the experience to make it work.</p>

<p>Good companies/bosses LIKE to make good workers happy. Do not be afraid. Do your own cost/benefit with the worst case/best case estimates. If you can live with the worst case, then what do you have to lose?</p>

<p>But again, I say , talk to your boss first and sooner rather than later.
And join or ask SWE people for more advice … not that here is bad by any means.</p>

<p>And bet you look great with your new hair cut. Shorter hair generally looks more professional.</p>

10

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<p>We’re very far into the project and running on all cylinders, and there’s physically no way that they could replace me. We’re shorthanded and begging for people as it is. Firing any single person on the team would be shooting ourselves in the foot.</p>

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<p>Likewise, this is a tenure-track position with an excellent salary, and excellent prospects for the future. He will be a Lecturer until he finishes his dissertation and gets his hood, at which time he will get a significant raise and be promoted to Assistant Professor. The only professor of composition there, and he’ll be the trombone professor as well as the composition professor. They need him for accreditation purposes, and they are a growing program. It’s really pretty exciting, and ultimately, I’m really thrilled for him.</p>

<p>At the same time, DH is goalie for my company’s soccer team (sigh) that my boss also plays on (siiiigh) so it’s not as though his absence will go unnoticed by the powers-that-be, particularly when they gear up for the new season this winter. In my company’s environment, where we throw each other baby showers and wedding showers and where we all know each other’s families, a spouse’s complete absence won’t go unnoticed. Keeping this quiet isn’t going to be possible.</p>

<p>I have faith that my husband and I, and our marriage, will make it. (Doubts as to whether or not our marriage will survive are probably best left unposted, thanks…) We’re champs at the long distance thing. We’ve been together eight years, and for four of those, we’ve lived in different places. First was Baton Rouge and Champaign-Urbana, then Baton Rouge and Los Angeles, so we’ve weathered some miles.</p>

<p>I think what I’ll probably aim for is to stay here for this coming academic year, as has been suggested, whether or not he starts next week or in January. I realize that uprooting everything and everyone to plunk us down somewhere sight unseen is probably an unwise thing to do. DH will probably get an apartment near campus and live there when he’s teaching, and come back here during breaks and for the summer. (Music professors have nine month contracts, and get summers off to go to workshops, attend festivals, or compose. He would just come back to Houston to get some writing done.)</p>

<p>We’ll try to make it “about us”… I suppose we’ll talk about how to best do that. </p>

<p>And anniversaries are important to both of us-- neither of us thinks that they’re overrated. The fact that the semester starts on our anniversary was something he noticed before I did. I may try to take some vacation time to go up there and spend the day with him.</p>

<p>Given that I’ll have to break the news to my coworkers and boss because they’ll find out anyhow, and that I’m not 100% certain that we’ll be leaving at all, and given that my boss is a kind and compassionate person who advanced me two weeks of vacation upon hiring so I could get married and have a proper honeymoon, and given that the chance of my being hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow is about the same as my chance of being fired… I know I should tell my boss first, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to wait until I have all the information, and then I’m going to figure out when to tell him, and I’ll ask when I should break the news to my coworkers.</p>

<p>Edit:

</p>

<p>That’s actually something else to think about-- we’ve got women engineers who are working part-time while they’re raising their families. In our new office space, get this: we’ve got <em>Lactation Rooms</em>! In an engineering firm! I get all misty thinking of the progress this field is making. And really, I think we bend over backwards for families, and that maybe what I’m asking isn’t so terrible after all. I can conceive that they would be mad at me for just keeping quiet and not trying to find a solution that works for me and my husband, too.</p>

<p>Thanks for the other tips, esobay… I’ll figure out a good plan and do the research to back it up, and I’ll check out SWE, too. Luckily, I’m one of those weird breeds of good engineer who has to work at the engineering, but has much more of a knack for people skills. I’m just a little gunshy at the moment because of a bad experience at the last place. (No Lactation Rooms there, for sure.)</p>

<p>Still interested in hearing any other opinions or advice. Thanks to everyone who’s chimed in so far; I really appreciate it.</p>

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<p>It sounds like you have never been to SW Utah and your husband visited only for the interview. I love southern Utah, but it would be extremely difficult to live there. I can pretty well guarantee that you will never end up living in the middle of nowhere between St George (or is it Cedar City?) and LV. There is no way to do a daily commute and there is NOTHING in between. You would need to spend some time in SW Utah before you decided to live there. It sounds like your husband is desparate for a job but he might need to look at this opportunity and decide if it fits his long term goals. Would he be in a community where he can develop his skills in music composition? Would he be able to complete his degree? Is it likely that the position would last and he would be happy with the career opportunities? What is the backup plan, if this job does not work out? I suspect the answers to these questions are not going to be real positive.</p>

<p>Best of luck with your decisions.</p>

12

<p>In the grand scheme of things, February isn’t that far off. I’d suggest throwing yourself into your project and using those months to make the best possible impression on your boss/company. THEN ask them if they would consider transferring you to the Las Vegas office.</p>

<p>Granted, you said that they already moved somebody from the LV because there wasn’t enough work. But things could pick up by February, and/or there may be somebody working in the LV office who would really like to move to Houston.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, your husband can be settling into his job and seeing if he even likes the place. (Which could be your reply when your co-workers ask if you plan to move: “We’re going to see whether he thinks this place is a good long-term fit first.”) A tenure-track position sounds great, but if the school, the politics, the department head, or the town turn out not to suit him, this could just be a stepping stone to someplace else. “Tenure track” is not a guarantee of tenure, only the promise that one will have a shot at it if all goes well.</p>

<p>A one-hour commute for each of you, each way? Well, that’s not impossible. But I’d take a hard look at that “middle of nowhere,” because that’s desert country. And desert middle of nowhere is a lot more barren and inhospitable than other places. Also, bear in mind that depending on what he’s teaching, it’s possible your husband won’t need to be on campus all day every day. So if one of you has to have the longer commute, make sure it’s him.</p>

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<p>I just wanted to point out that if the school wants your husband to start Monday, they need someone in that position NOW. The chances of them letting him delay that start until January are probably slim to none.</p>

<p>Good luck! I’m sure that this will all work out for you in the long run.</p>

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<p>Another consideration: I know you SAY you wouldn’t mind commuting 2 hours a day (is that one way???) – but I bet that will get old fast. And as someone just starting in academics, your husband won’t have a lot of flexibility in his schedule. Between teaching, taking part in an ‘expanding program’ being a part of an ‘accreditation process’ and doing the service he’ll need for tenure considerations, your husband may have to be on campus every day. Are you sure you want to add hours of daily commuting to already full schedules? Realistically, just how much time would you have “together,” anyway?</p>

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<p>Aibarr- I’m happy to read lots of good advice here. </p>

<p>I don’t have much to add, but it sounds like your company might be agreeable to you working part time, or work from home to make a long distance commute easier for you. </p>

<p>Sounds like you both have great opportunities- your company sounds terrific, H’s new job sounds great. </p>

<p>Good luck, I know you’ll figure out the right solution, and I like the idea of taking plenty of time to try out the situation before you make the final decision. </p>

<p>My mantra during the many months that H and I lived apart:
“This too, shall pass.”</p>

<p>BTW, I missed him the most when we lived apart as newlyweds, but the times that we lived apart and I was in the single parent role were brutal, and more depressing.</p>

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<p>I agree that you should wait until you have more firm facts before deciding to approach your boss. I also think that, especially with your description of your boss, you should approach the boss first with this as a ‘discussion’ item. Most managers at this level (not all but most) will be open to discussing it with you without negative repercussions and sometimes will even offer up options you might not have thought of. </p>

<p>Have you though of telecommuting to the Houston office from Utah rather than moving to the LV office and having a long commute? Would your job allow it? Some engineering jobs (particularly software development but also others) lend themselves to it since much time is spent writing the code, designing the circuit, etc. and with telecon calls and video conferencing capabilities, telecommuting becomes more viable. It can be supplemented with as-needed face to face meetings back at the HQ. Maybe you should see how open your boss would be to this.</p>

<p>Actually, commuting from southeastern Utah to LV would be an easy albeit possibly long commute. I say this because there is no traffic congestion to worry about between Utah and LV (the interstate’s wide open in that stretch), the road is very good with few curves to be concerned about except through the Virgin River gorge (which is very scenic and is worth slowing a bit for), and the weather is usually good. The last time I drove it the speed limit is even 75mph. I’ve driven the stretch between LV and Cedar City many times.</p>

<p>Finally, I don’t think a long-term long distance relationship is good and should be avoided - especially for newlyweds. Now’s an important time in your life and the two of you should go about enjoying life now together including the little things that get missed when conducting a long-term relationship. I recommend seeing what you can do to avoid it.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

17

<p>Epilogue:</p>

<p>My husband accepted the job, and they agreed that it was best that he start in January, so he’ll be here for a while yet, which is really wonderful.</p>

<p>I met with my boss today, who is truly a fantastic human being. I told him, and he didn’t even flinch. He smiled broadly and said, “Congratulations to your husband! That’s so great for him!” I said that I would stay here at least through next August and then reassess. I said that I would love to stay with the company, and that St. George (yup, edad, you got it right) is only two hours from Vegas, where we have an office. Lots of projects are being put on hold there, but he said that if our business model works the way it ought to (we do a lot of seamless work sharing between branch offices), that it shouldn’t matter what office I was in. He was very reassuring, and definitely gave me the impression that they’d like another experienced engineer out there, and that they’re very open to transferring people if they need to be transferred. “That’s part of life, and part of marriages,” he said, “We’re really flexible here.”</p>

<p>He was, however, extremely disappointed that the company soccer team was going to be losing its goalie!</p>

<p>We’re still going to be doing the long distance thing for a while, but he’s on an academic schedule. I’m going to try to take a couple of days off to spend our anniversary with him and help him move into his apartment out there when he starts. Since he’ll be working now, we’ll be able to afford to have him fly back every second weekend or so, and we’re enrolling in a frequent flier program, and switching our credit card to that program so we get points. It’ll only be for about four months. Plus, I get him for spring break.</p>

<p>I think this is probably the best possible outcome of a difficult situation. Thanks to everyone for the great advice; I really appreciate it, and it offered me a lot of peace of mind. A bunch of great folks here.</p>

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<p>You sound like you have a great boss, and are working for a great company! Good luck with everything.</p>

<p>I know a couple who were in a commuting marriage for 20 years–London-Tokyo!</p>

19

<p>That is awesome news and St. George is wonderful. I ran the marathon there in 1996. Keep us posted. Your boss sounds great.</p>

20

<p>That’s good aibarr - it sounds like things might work out okay.</p>

<p>Have you been to St. George? It’s a smallish town sort of out by itself in the midst of a lot of red rock desert area. It’s pretty close to Brianhead ski area which is one I like for its lack of crowds and generally excellent snow conditions (base elevation is 9600 feet). If you don’t ski now you might want to think of taking it up since Brianhead will be close enough for day trips. St. George is also fairly close to Zion national park which is very nice. Not too far away are Bryce Canyon NP and Cedar Breaks national monument (by Brianhead), Grand Canyon (North Rim), and more. You have a great opportunity for the outdoors if you’re interested - skiing, mountain biking, hiking, camping, touring, 4-wheeling, etc.</p>

<p>[SUMMER</a> at Brian Head Resort ~ Experience the Change.](<a href=“http://www.brianhead.com/about_our_story.htm]SUMMER”>http://www.brianhead.com/about_our_story.htm)</p>