Advice -- contacted by a recruiter for a specific job...

[mjr]

Hi all.

Job Advice question. Right now, I really like the company i work for. The money's good, the hours are great, and we've been remote for over a year, and may stay that way. Unfortunately, the customers we deal with use "old" technology, so there's no real way for me to get "on the job" experience with newer tech. For instance, they have programs that they use still written in Microsoft Access. They want to upgrade them, but only to .NET 4.6, not the newest .NET Core. Web stuff (my forte, and background) is basically out with our customers.

Well, I was contacted by a recruiter yesterday about a position. It would be full time remote, permanently, and could be a good bump in pay for me (in the neighborhood of $15-$20K per year over what I'm making now). Unfortunately, it's in a field (home lending) that I'm not passionate about, and is a little volatile (see: Mortgage Crisis). The recruiter said they might provide training to get me up to speed on their skillset, but she'd have to ask.

So the question is, should I stay with the job with the old tech that doesn't give me the opportunity to use new tech on the job, and try to learn the new tech at home (along with all the other stuff I'm doing in my personal life), or possibly pursue (and accept if they want to hire me) a job where I can make more money and use newer tech, but is in a volatile market?

[Kristev]

If things are going well, why would you change that for volatility? The human desire for novelty actually works against us more than it does for us.

I don't really know your situation, what you do, or anything like that. My personality is that I wouldn't do it. But I'm only stating that because I find change disgusting and I detest chaos. I prefer stability and security, personally.

[Deserted]

The housing market will experience a crash at some point. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe not for a few years... but it will happen, and when it does, they may very well decide that the current site is "good enough" and let everyone go. My brother was a mortgage processor back during the early-2000's housing bubble. He saw the end coming and got out before it happened, but if he hadn't, he would've been caught with his pants down.

[Kittish]

Another thing to think about is how many times does a recruiter recruit someone for a specific job, and the brand new employee starts work... and learns that the job they'll be doing bears little or no relation to what they were told the job would be and that they agreed to do. How many threads are there even just HERE where someone went out for a job, and learned that the job advertised for is NOT the job the business was actually hiring for?

Plus, yeah, what Deserted said. You might very well find yourself laid off or fired outright a month or two months or six months in. I'd stick with the reliable, stick-in-the-mud old tech job and work on learning newer stuff on your own time. Are online courses a possibility for you, so that your learning is formal education that you can put on a resume? Heck, will your current employer pay for part or all of any schooling for you to get/stay up to date with current tech (eventually they'll either get a client using more current tech or a current client will upgrade)? Almost certainly wouldn't hurt to ask...

[mjr]

Heck, will your current employer pay for part or all of any schooling for you to get/stay up to date with current tech (eventually they'll either get a client using more current tech or a current client will upgrade)? Almost certainly wouldn't hurt to ask...

Yes, and no. I can't go into any real detail, but with the type of training I would need, it would either have to be self-paced, or one of those two to four day courses that's during the day.

If I go with the latter, I believe the company will pay for it as long as it's work-related, or could possibly be in the future (a cloud computing certification course, for example). However, that also comes with a caveat and strings attached. With what I'm doing, I would literally have to use vacation time to take the course. Some companies will allow you to take those courses "on company time". Unfortunately, mine won't.