Hi! My engineer husband is being poached HARD by a startup company in Silicone Valley that he works with in his current position. A startup = instability in my mind, but this company did just land a hundreds of $$millions contract with a major national retailer, so signs are pointing to it being a successful startup anyway.
My husband currently makes a $100k base salary with bonus potential up to $130k - he has been averaging around $115k annually. I am a SAHM 75% of the time to our 1.5 year old and am pregnant with our second. I do have a unique gig 25% of the time where I pull in about $40k annually. Unfortunately this gig is hyper-local so that income would be gone if we moved.
Right now, we live in a medium COL Midwestern city - however I’d say our personal situation is low COL. We have no debt besides our mortgage, no daycare, we are able to max out our Roth’s each year, and my husband puts away about 12% into his 401(k). We bought a house 6 years ago, so although prices have skyrocketed in our neighborhood, our mortgage is very low as is our interest rate. In the last 2 years since he got his current job (after he graduated with his masters so it was a big jump), we’ve been able to save up a $25k emergency fund, create a $20k stock portfolio, started savings accounts for our kiddos, and sunk $50k into our house for necessary renovations (roof, windows, siding, furnace).
During negotiations with this startup, he said he would need a base salary of at least $300k to make a move like that worth it for us. He found a cost of living calculator online and that’s the number it literally spit out. It would be compensating for our giant jump in cost of living, my loss of income entirely, and sweet enough to not be a lateral move for us, frankly.
They told him he was crazy and that no engineers make that out there. The best they could do is a base salary in the high $100ks with another $100k of company shares, which if it IPOs eventually (not sure if I’m saying that right) could make us very wealthy.
It’s tough because on one hand this job could by itself be a great thing with the shares aspect if it takes off, especially because he’d be getting in early. And it also could open up a ton of other opportunities for him - I mean it’s Silicone Valley and he’s an engineer.
But he’s not a single guy, and we are very comfortable right now. It would be such a drastic change, especially considering our mortgage alone for an equivalent house out there would be 5x more. I don’t even know if the startup has a benefits package, and with a birth on the horizon plus two small children, that’s super important too.
Is the answer here obvious? What would you do?
Edited to add: I forgot this bit, but my husband currently works from home which we love love love having him around all the time. However working remotely would not be an option at the startup, so he’d be looking at a commute up to an hour each way every day which we don’t love
Submitted November 04, 2021 at 07:17AM by Tiffed4597 https://ift.tt/3k79Yzr
