In the beginning when I applied for the job - I've given an information that the only reason I'm coming to their company (which is a Software House) was because I got rejected from a dream job at the time of applying. And I've also mention that I will still be looking for that kind of job - but maybe in different company.
I've 4 years of experience working in a web startups / so-called software house companies (which are basically startups for startups). After these 4 years I've started looking for a job in a company which owns a product and generally in a company in which I could learn how to work with a product that is actually used by anyone and paid for.
Company structure at my current workplace
- we have one junior for backend development
- we have another junior for frontend development (we had two but the other one left for same reasons which I do want to now)
- and then there is myself which position is "Tech Leader" which basically means that I'm maintaining quality of software done by people mentioned previously, coding more critical stuff myself and doing all DevOps/SysOps. There is basically no other person which could replace what I'm doing / from which I could learn from or who could help me when there is no answers on StackOverflow.
Now due to that structure - the two other people are fully dependent on me and my decisions and they generally enjoy working with me - and so do I with them.
But as mentioned in first paragraph - that was not my initial plan - and I was still looking for that kind of job I've been meaning to. Sadly I didn't mention that more than at the beginning.
Now I've got an offer which is really exciting for me - and I'd really like to go there, and just recently I've approached my boss to mention it and I've been strongly suggesting it's all only because of my own progress that I want to make in my career.
Response was something amongst the line:
Our company will grow a lot, we're aiming to do stuff which other companies are doing not so good!
In my opinion you don't need that experience - and in the future you could as well get it here
If you're looking for more experience we can send you for a paid conferences / courses which will teach you that
There was similar situation just a two weeks ago that [some-other-employee] has also had a really great offer for a big company and he was literally crying because he wanted to stay with us!
Our projects maybe are not so big right now, but if the investment for them comes in we could grow it by a lot and our team will also grow!
You've got an awesome team, and you won't find that much of freedom in any other place, you could be just a regular worker in other bigger companies, and so you won't learn as much as you think
I've been here for 7 years (because company is a spin-off of another company which is older) and I've known enough companies to know I can't grow anywhere else - and so you probably won't too!
And the list goes with similar connotations and this really feels like playing with my emotions and I don't find it comfortable.
How should I approach to that? How to tell them that it's not my fault that they made whole company dependent on me? Because it clearly sounds they just don't want their team to break a part (and this literally will happen because most of the team mates has said that they will leave if I do).
Also, I know that frontend person has also considered changing a job in the near past, but they didn't let him by giving him a raise - in my opinion this was bad decision - how to tell them that?
I don't want to "burn bridges" with them - they know lot of people - but that kind of negotiation is just getting on me too much.