So I switched jobs over a month and a half ago and I have always meant to write about why I changed jobs and I haven’t gotten around to it until now.

I started working at Omniture in May of 2006. I started out as an intern and for the almost two years I worked there I enjoyed it. However, I soon found myself working a lot of hours. Some days I was at work from 8:00am to midnight. A couple times of working late was fine and understandable but then it became a more regular thing.

After the late nights had gone on for a while I was realizing I was a away from my family too much and wasn’t able to fulfill some of my other responsibilities. Well, Omniture had me convinced that they paid really well. So for a while I just worked the late nights to support my family.

After a while I started talking to some of my buddies and found out that I was working a lot more hours then they were doing the same thing. I also found out I was getting paid less then most of them. One buddy told me that he worked for the State of Utah and never had to work more then 40 hours and he thought I should apply. I applied for two jobs at the with the State and was offered a position at the Office of Education. Unfortunately, the offer required me to take a $17,000/year pay cut. The was out of the question. I figured I’d do the other interview with the Department of Technology services. I wasn’t counting on an offer being much better from them. However, in the end I was offered just as much as Omniture was paying me.

My wife and I discussed the new offer and decided it was not a bad deal. Same pay, fewer hours and great benefits. I decided to take the job. Since March 10th I have been a employee for the State of Utah and enjoy that I am home more with my family now with an hour commute then I was with a 15 minute commute.

The point of this is that it is disappointing that there are so many people that ask a lot of hours from their employees but don’t compensate them for the time away from their family. My boss at Omniture told me they pay for all those hours and we shouldn’t need to be compensated. I think people higher up in the company forget that lower employees such as myself don’t benefit from the long hours like they did. They worked all those hours and made a lot of money but when the lower employees put in that amount of time they pay them a measly salary.

Don’t get me wrong. I miss working at Omniture but I had to decide whether Omniture was my family or my wife and kids were my family.