Should I accept new job offer which has lots of unpaid overtime? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I work in the IT industry.

My current workplace provides a good decent salary, not many benefits, but great work life balance, and I get to work from home almost 95% of the time. This also leaves me good enough time to focus on side projects where I can earn some more side income. The only disadvantage is that the company is not stable, so sometimes salaries are late, and I am not sure how it will be after 6 months.

Because of this I started looking for jobs. I got an offer. This company offers slightly higher salary, great benefits, but no work from home at all. And it requires a lot of unpaid overtime (around 3-4 extra hours a day), sometimes even on weekends. You could say, around 60%-65% of the working days in a year would have overtime. That's a HUGE disadvantage for me. This company has bigger and better clients, so once I leave from here, I would get better job prospects.

I am in 2 minds, because of the extreme workload and very low pay given the workload, of this job offer. If I take this new job offer, my work-life balance is pretty much gone, and I won't even have time for extra side projects. I have a few options now, and was wondering what would be best:

1. Negotiate a significantly higher salary for the new job offer, and ONLY IF they agree, then take it.
2. Accept the offer with a decent pay but not as high as point 1 above, and decide to leave company after 1 year, get better job prospects in future.
3. Decline the offer, stick with the current job I have as it is still safe for 6 months at least, and continue looking for better opportunities in that time.

(Point no. 1 and 2 also come with the risk of me hating my days as its just going to be so much extra workload, including weekends)

Any advice?