ever been poached?

an ex coworker is trying to get me to leave for his new company, he says its basically the same job but less work, more pay, better culture, etc

by switching i’d be getting about 40k more in salary after my raise this year.

seems too good to be true but maybe i just dont know my worth

2 years experience running private cloud infra kube platform, terraform, vra, jenkins, coding custom k8s mutating/validating webhooks and crd operators in go.

this is my first tech job after “learning to code” so i have major impostor syndrome

Yeah, I have a former coworker who is trying to poach me but I keep playing it off because I know he is within his one year non-solicitation agreement and I don’t want his fuckup to cost me whatever job I have there.

If you’re in the clear from something like from your former coworker and there’s little/no chance that they will tattle to your current employer then you should at least consider it. I have never gotten a major raise at any job that I’ve stayed it; my biggest salary and benefit gains came from switching jobs, and now is the best time to switch jobs.

What could it hurt to sit down (virtually or IRL) with a coffee and talk though it, maybe put in an application?

Relatedly, if he’s telling you the salary is +$40k per year then that means you’re worth at least that much, and it’s very likely you that you’re worth more on the open market. If you’re entertaining this offer it means you’re looking for a change, so it might not hurt to put in a few applications or feelers to your network to see if you can find something even better.

i know im getting ripped off becasue they have me teaching people how to code now who have worked here for way longer than myself and am considered a “senior golang guy” on the team, but im still a “new grad” level in the HR structure

the main thing im looking for is full remote, which the new job opportunity is, and my current job wants us to Get Back To The Office (at least partially)

Is the role your former coworker offering full remote?

yeah

i live in the NYC metro area and want to move away from here and buy a house upstate somewhere so i can really cut my costs down,

That makes a lot of sense.

I agree that some level of research is necessary here - if you interview (as opposed to your former co-worker hiring you without an interview) then it would be helpful to ask questions about your areas of concern, and you probably also want to check former employee ratings for red flags on Glassdoor if they’re big enough for that sort of thing, but if all of that checks out then it sounds like this might be the full remote foot in the door you were looking for.