A job-changing story

Being a regular, and silent viewer of this forum, I have gained a lot of vuluable insights and wisdoms on job and life from posts here. I'd like to share my recent job-changing story here, as a way to show my appreciation for the helps I have got through reading the posts by you guys.

Having been an assist. res. prof. (or senior postdoc) at a third tier university with a yearly contract for several years, and managed to get a good number of publications in 2nd and 3rd tier journals during the period, I have been routinely overlooked for promotion. So I started job-searching and got an offer from industry with pay that was 30% than I was receiving. When indicating to the head of department my desire to resign, he immediately countered by matching the pay with a tenure-track assist. prof. position. I declined the counter offer by saying that if this counter offer occurred 12 or 6 months back, I might have considered. I addition, with competition for scientific fundings being tough now and in the coming years, it will not be an easy transition into a tenured position in due time.

The take home message of this story is if you don't have a choice (or offer), you are likely to be overlooked for promotion that you deserve. Once you have the offer, it will be too late for them to make the counter offer work.