BUT. None of that really matters. What matters is you and the kind of environment you would thrive in. And take a really long game view.
Ignoring everything else though, I’d bet on Wise for long term career prospects, and the sort of doors that would open, but really it depends on what the role is. I’m coming at it from the view of an engineer. And actually, I think the role will play a pretty significant factor on which will be the better prospect.
It’s more of an assistant role, so definitely not engineer or anything as technical, but I am hoping this will be my last assistant role, so progression and learning is very important to me. Wise would be the Product Team and Visa the Data Team, it’s really a hard decision as both potential bosses seem very supportive of my aspirations.
I have worked in a start-up before and even though Wise is passed that stage, I do like environment and vibe, it still feels much like a start-up, which I had a great time at. Equally, Visa is a lot less corporate than I thought it may be.
Also, I feel like with Visa by the time I have been there for a couple of years with their learning and development budget (almost £5K), I could have a whole new qualification, whereas the budget at Wise for L&D is £750 per annum, which obviously is a lot more restrictive.
Absolute minimum legally is 5.6 weeks but that can include public holidays. It makes quite a difference e.g. in my case I get 12 public holidays a year plus normal holidays.
The base salary is actually £5K less with Wise and they know I have a bigger offer and still haven’t increased the offer, so that kind of surprised me that they haven’t increased the offer at all, even as a gesture. Plus Visa do cash bonuses and stock whereas Wise only do RSUs, no cash bonuses.
Annual leave:
Wise is 25 days + bank hols + 3 ‘me’ days, plus 90 days work from anywhere in the world
Visa is 28 days + bank hols, plus 4 weeks
Lol. Yes, 100% remote working would be a dream. Even still the overall package with Visa and all it’s benefits is definitely the winner financially. Just can’t figure out which has more potential for promotion and growth…
Visa isn’t a banking institution but rather provides the framework for the banks to offer its payment services. Wise is one of the members of Visa (and MasterCard) and uses those frameworks but also offers financial products so in addition to the payment card, it does money transfers and investments i.e. it’s more varied than Visa.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Much appreciated.
I hope for this to be my last assistant role, so progression and budget for further courses and education are important to me.
I feel like that’s only a problem if your company isn’t prepared for remote work
If Wise is mostly remote, I wonder how they’d police the “90 days work abroad” thing. Many countries with super cheap WiFi and a cheap short-haul flight; what would stop me from spreading my time around Eastern Europe/China but maintaining my tax residency in Britain? They’ve probably not got any meaningful way of enforcing it
If it’s genuinely fully remote they probably wouldn’t, IME, they stipulate these things to avoid the tax implications of having to pay someone in a country they don’t have an HR presence within.
If it’s hybrid then obviously there’s something to track.
Most corporate IT systems will have the ability to record (and act upon) where connections are geographically coming from as part of their security suite. For example, the system may spot that you logged in at 9am on your normal corporate device in the UK, but at 10am and whilst you are still logged in and working, an unknown “never seen before” device tried to connect from another country - that second attempt may well get blocked as suspicious, or require further authentication before permission is granted. However, in most cases, it will most likely simply log the information, which whilst I agree means there may not be an immediate enforcement, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that it could be retrospectively worked out that your connection was coming from abroad every day.
Seems like it’s super easy to work around, all I need to do is have my parents run me a little machine at their house that I tunnel work connections through and I never left the UK
Obviously your personal tax implications may vary and get your tax advice from independent advisors across both jurisdictions but, reading the tax treaty between UK-China at least, as long as you have greater ties in UK compared to the China it doesn’t seem like there’s anything stopping you from paying all your work taxes in Britain and living full-time for some other reason in China (providing you can get a residents card, which I think you can do on a tourist visa if you stay long enough)
There is an expectation that if you can’t get decent Internet then you can’t routinely work in a hybrid fashion - i.e. you work in one of the offices except for things like family emergencies.
In terms of a contractor, you don’t need to prove anything - if you’re not happy, they’re pretty much gone.
5k difference doesn’t matter if you can work from a cheap country