How do you deal with leaving a company where you feel you play an important role in the success of ongoing operations?
To give background on my own specific situation, I am an early 20's IT professional with a beautiful 5 month old baby & a passion for scripting and process automation. I took a new job 5 months ago just as my son (first) was born. In this time, I've learned a lot and grown substantially. I've met an individual I currently consider to be my mentor who has helped me a lot in refining my scripting design and shared a lot of wisdom and experience about the software development field.
As part of my role at this company, I've spent a lot of time developing custom powershell automation scripts and solutions to repetitious tasks that otherwise would have involved a lot of man hours doing manual systems work. I have a few projects coming down the pipeline that I am positioned as a key resource for, using a scripting language that I'm the only one in the company with experience in. Additionally I have been receiving training on a vendor software suite that we're in the process of upgrading, though I can probably wrap this up in about 3-4 weeks if it came down to it.
The issue I'm dealing with morally is that I've been approached by a company via LinkedIn asking me to interview for a role that offers almost twice my current salary to do the "slice" of my job that I enjoy and want to do full time (Scripting & Automation Development) for a much much larger company.
I'm proceeding with the phone interview, and still haven't decided to take it further if the new company decides they want me. Regardless of the outcome, it has raised the moral question in my mind, what should dictate my loyalty to a company?
That being said, your obligation is to yourself, not your company. If your current company isn't meeting your needs, you are not really wrong to leave. If the roles were reversed and you were not meeting your employer's needs, they would likely have few qualms about letting you go and finding someone else. Presumably if this new employer is offering you nearly twice the salary, and you are able to secure that position, your old employer was not really providing a competitive level of compensation.
I am comfortable remaining at my company long-term because they have repeatedly demonstrated valuing me as an employee, and ensuring compensation and benefits are competitive. I probably wouldn't consider a higher offer at current, because despite an on paper increase, I don't know a new employer would continue to demonstrate the value they place in mean over time.
Depending on your new employer's rules and expectations, should you get the job, you can also potentially do a certain amount to soften the blow for your previous employer. I've generally left the open offer to reach out to me if a previous employer has any questions or issues after I left which I might be able to provide insight on. (Far too often, people leave and any knowledge they have disappears immediately, which is something I prefer to avoid with myself.)