u/FaceCold

I'm in the Philippines and currently trying to decide between staying in my current company or moving to a startup.

Option 1: Stay (Legacy Company)

- 16% more annual compensation than the other if I stay until January (including 13th month, 14th month, and probable performance bonus)

- Stable, established company

- Currently working in Organization Development

- Can continue building OD experience

- Pure onsite

- The downside is that I'm honestly feeling burned out and mentally exhausted of the company's culture. Not the work - the culture.

Option 2: Leave (Startup)

- lesser annual basic compensation

- Hybrid with work-from-home setup, Instructional Design role with systems and process improvement

- HMO covers 2 dependents

- New environment and potentially more flexibility

- Longer commute on office days

- Startup, so naturally there is more uncertainty

- I also worry that once the novelty wears off, the work could become repetitive.

Some additional context:

- Financially, staying until January is the more logical choice.

- Career-wise, I wonder if the startup experience and flexibility might be more valuable long term.

- If I stay, I still plan to continue applying for better opportunities and would likely want to leave by January anyway.

If you were in this situation, what would you choose and why?

Would you prioritize the additional compensation and stability, or take the hybrid startup role and bet on future growth?

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I'm in the Philippines and currently trying to decide between staying in my current company or moving to a startup.

Option 1: Stay (Legacy Company)

- Around 700k annual compensation if I stay until January (including 13th month, 14th month, and probable performance bonus)

- Stable, established company

- Currently working in Organization Development

- Can continue building OD experience

- Pure onsite

- The downside is that I'm honestly feeling burned out and mentally exhausted of the company's culture. Not the work - the culture.

Option 2: Leave (Startup)

- Around 600k annual basic compensation

- Hybrid with work-from-home setup, Instructional Design role with systems and process improvement

- HMO covers 2 dependents

- New environment and potentially more flexibility

- Longer commute on office days

- Startup, so naturally there is more uncertainty

- I also worry that once the novelty wears off, the work could become repetitive.

Some additional context:

- Financially, staying until January is the more logical choice.

- Career-wise, I wonder if the startup experience and flexibility might be more valuable long term.

- If I stay, I still plan to continue applying for better opportunities and would likely want to leave by January anyway.

If you were in this situation, what would you choose and why?

Would you prioritize the additional compensation and stability, or take the hybrid startup role and bet on future growth?

I recently accepted a job offer and submitted my resignation.

The new company is a startup. The guaranteed compensation increase is only around 5%, although there is a performance-based incentive that could significantly increase total earnings.

The reason I started looking wasn't mainly compensation.

For the past several months, I've been feeling increasingly misaligned with my role. I enjoy work involving systems, frameworks, diagnostics, process improvement, and organizational design. However, I found myself spending much more time on engagement-related initiatives, administration, coordination, and other work that I don't find nearly as energizing.

I also became frustrated with what felt like a reactive environment where priorities changed frequently and execution struggled to keep up. Ironically, while my current employer is a decades-old company with strong benefits and job security, it often operates with the pace and unpredictability of a startup, with shifting priorities and frequent firefighting.

After I submitted my resignation, things became complicated.

My company revealed a major transformation that would potentially move my role much closer to the type of work I've been wanting. Leadership is also discussing a possible salary adjustment to retain me.

The challenge is that while the proposed structure sounds promising, I'm not fully confident in its execution. One of the reasons I started looking elsewhere in the first place was because I've seen many initiatives launched with good intentions, only for priorities to shift before they are fully implemented or sustained. So I'm struggling to separate the promise of the future structure from the reality of how change has historically been executed.

My current employer is a stable legacy company with strong benefits, internal credibility, and leadership support. The startup offers a completely different environment, but also comes with more uncertainty.

I feel a strong desire to explore a different environment and find out what I'm capable of outside the company I've spent the last two years in. At the same time, I can't ignore the possibility that my current company is finally moving toward the type of work and structure I've been wanting all along.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

How do you distinguish between:

• needing a new environment for growth, and

• leaving too early before positive changes materialize?

What factors would you prioritize in making this decision?