Decisions

Ken has been working as Siemens for about ten years now. He was taken on as a design engineer, however, due to internal politics, the design work has been taken over to Germany, and Ken is currently spending most of his days doing testing on other products. Frankly, he is somewhat bored and frustrated.

Two months ago he was headhunted by a much smaller and rival company. They don't do exactly the same products as Siemens but are more innovative and Ken would be working on a broader range of products than he currently does. Siemens heard about this approach and asked Ken what they would need to do to keep him in Congleton. He told them. They offered it to him. Then an even bigger boss heard that Ken was bored and offered him ten years in Germany, to start on October 1st. We said five years. They said they would take whatever we offered them. Siemens want to keep Ken.

This is all very flattering, but now what do we do? Ken has three groups of people after him and all have their upsides and their downsides: breadth of product and closer to Ken's parents versus smaller and less secure (and a part of the country I am not keen on but Ken is); no move and a new product to design if we stay here versus less security as what happens when this product is completed; excitement of Germany in the same area as previously versus no m-i-l support for childcare, learning German for Ken.

Help!

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