calmom makes an excellent point!
I have consulted for big-city to mid-city Mayors, as well as a host of Governors–bottom-line, and if this is above-board and has the legitimate signature of the Mayor–you should be getting paid–period.
If you’re in a special one-year program that has lots of benefits to you (you’re paid and you get to shadow VPs), I think you have some obligation to finish it absent a really good reason.
I agree that in most circumstances you should finish the one-year program. Few college graduates are “inspired” by the very first job they take out of college - you have to pay your dues and learn first before you can move onto the good stuff.
Personally, I think even with his new offer you shouldn’t do it. This guy sounds kind of sketchy; even if he is a legitimate investor and businessman I mean his approach sounds sketchy. I would have a difficult time trusting someone who originally tried to take advantage of me in an illegal unpaid internship, even if he later circled back and offered some pay. Plus you’re at a big broadcasting company shadowing vice presidents. If you want to be in the entertainment industry (or any related ones), that sounds like a big deal.
But if you do really want to do it, I agree with @calmom. If he wants you to move across the country, he should
- More than match your current salary
- Top it up so that you can pay for benefits (if you are contracted/1099 then you’ll have to pay for your own health insurance, retirement savings, etc.; most contractors charge more for their services than they would get paid as FTEs to cover these costs).
- Pay your relocation expenses
- Provide you with a CONTRACT and pays you on the up-and-up. No under the table payments; not only do you want to make sure that you’re paying taxes correctly, you also want to be sure that the terms don’t suddenly change once you touch down in his city.
Thanks, Im meeting him in the coming weeks to discuss all in detail and I will use $$$$, contracts, etc as the criteria about whether to hop ship or stay put. Thank you all for your sound advice.
With my current program, they are revving up the pressure to start applying for full time jobs once the program ends–its quite apparent this is a talent retaining pipeline program. In these programs, if you are aware you do not want to even work in dept at years end, am I wasting both my time and theirs by staying? And maybe “shadowing” VPs seems more fancy than it is. I am in a program that works with the less “glamorous” side of the company - its not production or development or any of that. Trying not to be too specific as I do want to maintain a certain degree of anonymity lol. I work with the VPs of teams just as I would as an incoming analyst. They are not VPs of the company but of the depts and their salaries are more like $200K not a million lol. The closest I got to the CEO was in the elevator one time.
The best perk is being able to set up informationals with people outside of my dept who are doing cooler things that I might be interested in—but bec of the nature of my dept I do have to keep the informationals on the hush hush.