Sorry for spending too much time on my job search, but I think this will be of value to me down the road to evaluate this decision and well it very much effects my financial situation and retirement goals.  In fact it may somewhat ruin my goals as they may become too easy…again not worst problem in the world.

Well if you have been following my blog lately you know that I have quite a few options available to me.  I have actually turned down Company 1 and a few other opportunities have presented me since my previous posts.  One of those opportunities is with a client that I have been consulting at for the last 1.5 years and while base salary wise it is not the highest of the bunch, the total compensation bonuses/401k matching/pension/health insurance takes it pretty much to the top.  Add in the fact that it is 18 minutes from my home, has very flexible and light hours, and I would be able to use the latest and greatest technology and it is pretty much by far the place I want to work at.

Now today I am going to go try and resign from my position at my consulting company.  Here is where it could get sticky,  my current employer gets very ugly when people try to do this, threatening to sue people and ruin their careers.  I am 90% certain I do not have a non-compete agreement signed with them in which case I think they can talk all they want but they got nothing to stand on.  My first order of business will be to try to extract the non-compete information from HR first.   Then if I know I do not have a non-compete I will be somewhat confident of my ability to hold my own in an argument with the my boss/owner.  I’m still not holding my breath it will go over that well.  Last two people that tried to leave for a customer with no non-compete signed, the owner scared the living crap out of them and even gave one guy a stress induced heart-attack.   He still didn’t let up after this and well let’s just say it will be an interesting day :-)  If I have no non-compete signed I feel I have enough knowledge of employment law in Wisconsin that I won’t be that scared and will be able to push back pretty good.

Needless to say I have left everything else on the table with my other offers to see how today goes as it very well could get ugly in which case in a worst case  scenario (I have a non-compete) I may need to evaluate other options.

Note:  When you start a new job make sure you get a copy of everything you signed and keep it in a safe place, it could be very valuable down the road.