Soldato
At least you have established that as an option.
Good your employer is playing ball though.
Work want to make my role redundant & have offered me two alternatives both lower pay
- Thread starter breathe3asy
- Start date
At least you have established that as an option.
Good your employer is playing ball though.
Take the product role, do it for < 1 year and send your CV out, aim to work in a software related tech job rather than another telco.
£35K for a product manager with 7 years experience (presumably 4 years as some sort of Engineer or other technical before your 3 years pre-sales) is an absolute joke! That's a 00s era starting salary for a new graduate in software!
4 years Engineer/Analyst/techie/whatever -> 3 years presales -> 1 year Product Owner/Manager on a CV shows good progression and would be great for you to use to switch jobs but... don't rush to switch, take your time and find the right role.
Don't take the redundancy, the new job title/new experience in that role is valuable, what you do want to do is take your time and start interviewing after a few months and importantly don't tell the recruiter or potential employer your current salary. You are massively underpaid if you were to switch to a tech/software company.
Be prepared to turn down a couple of roles, you might not be as polished for the first couple of interviews use them as practice, get a feel for the sort of amounts you could push for (this can also vary considerably depending on the firm).
So nothing then ... that's a bad option to take, it's basically a rounding error in your next salary negotiation and you'll be in a weaker position applying for new roles having been made redundant than if your CV shows you've recently been "promoted" to a product role.
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Thanks to everyone for your thoughts so far.
@dowie thanks for your comment. The new proposed role is to become product specialist with the opportunity to tool up & progress to product manager, it would mean working closely with the product manager and assisting on what needs to be done which is like I say, a lot, the business has acquired many others each of which all have their own product portfolios.
We are more than a telco these days more like a tech company but like you say after 1 yrs experience junior Product could still have a similar effect on my CV & be interpreted as progression.
It would be tough to get stuck in and be motivated knowing my pay has been cut circa 10k a year, especially since I know the kind of money the sales guys pull in but I guess I would have to remind myself frequently of the value the role is contributing. Like I say other than some interpersonal skills, there has been very little personal growth in me working as pre sales so a change up could be a good thing.
Soldato
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- 14 Jun 2004
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yer take the 35k.
it looks like im in a imilar situation this yea :/ work been automating/outsourcing and generally dismantling role. with out much investment in the staff.
so i do feel for you. but you have some good options take the job untill the economy settles down or you can get a better job or a job you actually want to do.
the betray is strong an anger smoldering.
but my advise is be sensible and logical more than emotional. revisit financs to check what you can change and what you can save on as well.
it looks like im in a imilar situation this yea :/ work been automating/outsourcing and generally dismantling role. with out much investment in the staff.
so i do feel for you. but you have some good options take the job untill the economy settles down or you can get a better job or a job you actually want to do.
the betray is strong an anger smoldering.
but my advise is be sensible and logical more than emotional. revisit financs to check what you can change and what you can save on as well.
Soldato
Take the 35k job whilst you look for another role.
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Soldato
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- 7 Jan 2009
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- 6,647
This is what I'd probably do, it's hard enough trying to find another full time atm let alone one that's in a particular field, at least you'd have income whilst looking for another job.
Associate
Take the 35k job if your not confident of landing a better job fairly soon or the redundancy if you think you'll get a job pretty quick - either way you should be leaving them!
Associate
Not sure if it's been mentioned anywhere, but there legally should be a trial period for taking the new role.
Take the 35k role, and use those 4 weeks or so to try and find a new role, if your lucky, you'll be able to get the role you want, have a 4-week buffer, and still have your redundancy payout.
Take the 35k role, and use those 4 weeks or so to try and find a new role, if your lucky, you'll be able to get the role you want, have a 4-week buffer, and still have your redundancy payout.
Soldato
What have you been doing technical pre sales for? Are we talking Cisco/avaya etc? You could easily get a good technology sales job with decent experience paying at least double what you’re on
Hosted VoIP such as:
- Horizon by Gamma
- Teams Voice/Direct Routing
- LG Cloud
- PhoneLine+ (PSTN replacement)
I'm thinking about having a chat with the powers that be to look them in the eyes and find out the reasoning behind the bullet for presales, other than the obvious lack of engagement from them with the role. I also take some responsibility for allowing myself to drift.
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Associate
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- 16 Nov 2011
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- 169
I hate to be that person, but the company haven't offered you a lower paid role if you have given the correct figure above
You say your base salary is £25K, which suggests you are making around £17K commission every year if you are earning £42K as per your original post
They have offered you either £25K plus commission (which seems to be what you are on now) in one job, or £35K for the other job, both of which are matching or bettering your current contract in terms of base salary
Current role - £25K plus commission (based on the post above)
Offer A - £25K plus commission
Offer B - £35K
No worries at all, you've understood correctly, apart from I failed to mention in my OP that I get 3k car allowance per year which takes me to around 45k a year currently - £25k base and average of £20k commission.
Both roles are lower pay per month compared to what I'm taking home today as like I say in OP the sales role would take around 18 months building clients before I break even, and the Product role is 10k less per year and that's the ceiling.
Are you saying from a legal standpoint they are offering me suitable alternatives matching or increased vs. my contractual pay? I would like to think after 7+ years service they don't treat me like a contract but either way I'm backed into a corner, so now that I've understood what is happening a little more I can hopefully level with them in person.
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Associate
- Joined
- 16 Nov 2011
- Posts
- 169
I am certainly not qualified to give legal advice, this is just my understanding of the information you have provided
The only reason both roles are lower pay per month than what you currently take home is because of your commission, which they could say is not part of the equation because it is effectively a bonus because of how well you do the job - if you weren't as good at the job you could be taking home just the £25K per year and they have offered you another role at that same figure
You do say that you could potentially get back to that £45K figure with the first job, but it would take time to build the relationships and increase your commission, which is what you appear to have done in your current position to get to the figure you are at now
Unfortunately, whenever commission is involved, you can't really take it as guaranteed income, as a bad year could see all of that wiped out in a worst case scenario, but I understand where you are coming from in terms of what you currently take home and what you have been offered
Have you based your lifestyle/spending on the £45K, or could you live on the £25K or £35K if you took one of those roles?
Logic would tend to dictate you take the higher paid role to minimise the instant loss of earnings, but I would be keen to know if there would be scope for progression with increased pay
Soldato
Forgive ignorance here, but can't you take the redundancy cash (as compensation for loss of your current role), and then get re-employed on either of the roles they have offered you? So that way you get both - the cash gives you a safety net and the new job gives you some income while you look for something else.
Its no loss to the company - they would have to re-hire the two roles anyway if they paid you the cash and so they are no better or worse off either way.
Its no loss to the company - they would have to re-hire the two roles anyway if they paid you the cash and so they are no better or worse off either way.
Soldato
This happened at a previous company I was with.
Sales guys living it large because the BM was lax about raising the bonus thresholds whilst they were hitting targets with ease each month because they were low. These bonuses effectively added 1.5x their base, ie £500/week became £1250
After a while they started living beyond their base salary then HO noticed the bonus payments and replaced the BM, who immediately looked at figures & lifted the threshold enough that only the top 20% of earners would hit the top bonus tier which caused a massive row as the standard tier was only 10% of the sales value if the sales value exceeded a certain target.
This is the thing, my commission is calculated from group performance, not my own. If the sales team perform well, I get commission, calculated via weighted excel formulas (lol) that have averaged me around 20k additional per year.
So the directive was help the sales guys sell, however this was never reviewed or measured as growth has been good which eventually led me to drift and I should have spoken up but here we are.
It doesn't matter if I sit 1 meeting a month or 30, I have nobody to answer to and to date nobody has explicitly pulled me up on performance and now I'm being faced with 2 avenues, sales or product, salary & individual performance based commission from scratch, or just salary.
In fact this time last year I sat down for my end of year review with my Sales Director which was a coffee that lasted 15 mins, we looked at my pay and he was like, you should probably get a payrise, send me an email to that effect and when I did he came back and said he'd rather reward on value basis and to send him some targets at which point I lost interest due to lack of engagement, I didn't have the same insight as to where the business was going to be able to position my targets as well as he may have. Looking back I'm I'm actually disappointed in myself for subconsciously being unhappy about the above but not doing anything about it because my paycheck has been ok
I think progression is irrelevant IMO, 35k for an experienced employee in product is ridiculously low so even if there is progression it's dubious as the company doesn't pay well and really OP should look to leave.
Just in general once you're at a place for more than 4 years you're likely lagging the market anyway (unless you've had significant promotions) but in terms of progression OP only needs to look externally, there are certainly roles for good product people elsewhere and they'll pay a heck of a lot more.
Soldato
Should the second part not be based on your 7 weeks pay period and not the 25k?
On the figures you give it’s approx 7k in your pocket to walk away and find a job elsewhere or lose out on that to stay on at 35k a year?
Soldato
quoting for truth