As soon as he heard that I had resigned, Barry Rahimian, the main sales guy at ATS Oregon grabbed me by the arm and took me in to see Jim Sheldon, the new head of the Oregon, California, Arizona, and Asian offices. Jim made a counter offer with a promise to get me involved in sales, management, or some other mechanism to give me a better career path. He is planning on expanding the business down into Mexico and said I could even be involved in that.

Now I have to decide what to do. Even though the offer from Micro Encoder was bigger by far than anything I have ever received before, it would not take that much additional money to make it worth my while to stay here in Oregon. We are much closer to the rest of our family, the cost of living is much lower, we would not have to move, Oregon is way more homeschool friendly than Washington, the drive to work is much, much better, etc. If I have some more money, some more vacation and a career path that allows me to grow and improve my career, I can be quite happy at ATS. One of the biggest things is that Jim Sheldon is a very impressive guy and, after talking to him, I believe he will make this place really happen.

I talked to Lorena about this last night and she is really interested in not having to leave her new house. Although it is not perfect, we really like it there. We have a big yard, a great new patio, a quiet neighborhood, a super Sunday morning meeting. We really have absolutely nothing about which to complain. I am planning to talk to Jim this morning and tell him that I am absolutely game to stick around if he fixes the vacation, salary, and career path elements of my work situation.