Ask HN: Taking a demotion to work at a better company?

15% is a lot of money as I am guessing you make 6 figures based on your job title.

"While I like my coworkers, have good pay and low stress.."

Again, these are very important factors to consider. The 3 things you mentioned is a really nice thing to have going for you in any job.

I am not necessarily telling you what to do but consider this:

- Are you willing to take a chance to work at a "unicorn" for 15% lower pay ?

- Are you willing to take a chance to give up "low stress" and potentially get into a high stress environment ? You don't know that for sure.

- Are you willing to meet new co-workers and find out they may not be as nice/friendly as you current ones ? They could of course be better than the current ones.

- Most important question: Are you at a point in your life where changing a "safer" job is ok ? Are you in that phase "I am too old for this shit" (not trying to stir up age discrimination here but at the age of 35 myself, I do say fck it to lot of things that I did in my 20s)

The answer to these questions can possibly help you decide.

> How have the downstream job prospects gone after taking a demotion?

I haven't done anything like that first hand, and this response might not be useful, but FWIW I have browsed many profile on LinkedIn (mostly stackexchange users and HN folks who make it public, and the related ones) and I was quite surprised to see many have done something similar - taken a demotion to join startups. I was further surprised that their next job was at a more established megacorp at a level comparable to the original one. By this observation it seems not to be a problem. However, I don't quite know if they had it easy or had to negotiate a bit, both for the position and the salary.

How many hours per week do you work in the current job? How many will you work in your new job? What are you doing in the your free hours?

I have done something similar. Lost a lot of money in the immediate short term, but the long term benefits after 2+ years were worth every penny. A chance to upgrade your skills and work on something that excites you is imho priceless. You should grab it while you still can.

+1 for "work on something that excites you is imho priceless"

If you're to the stage of getting offered a position where you have to lose your bonus if you jump ship, there's no harm in asking for the 15% bonus you would have received as a sign-on bonus. Have you asked? Finding an experienced data science director is getting exceptionally expensive these days, and even at your current salary they may be way-lowballing you.

Megacorps tend to be a lot more stable than startups, and that may include the unicorn in question. Your current job probably has no expiration date (if no excitement either). Are you content with it being more likely you'll be out of work in 6 months to 2 years?

I've taken 15% paycuts for more interesting work (and more!) And I've never regretted it.

Man management demotions have never caused me any issues.

I'll also add 15% is within the negotion margins most places, so you might not need to take a cut at all.

I've made a similar move and have no regrets. Lost the title, but gained valuable experience. Over time, I have noticed that I care less about titles and more about the work I do. No doubt that helping a startup go through a period of hypergrowth (still in the middle of it!) will be tremendously more beneficial to me long-term than overseeing a tiny department year in, year out.

That was my case one year ago: working for a megacorp and left to freelance. Now working as head of Data Science at a small Digital Transformation consulting firm.

For me this has been a personal development accelerator. It's a demotion only if you feel it is.

Megacorps are usually slow (that was my case) and I felt I could be lagging behind the sector if I stayed there and I was right: New projects in the Megacorp halted after I left and they are trying to start them now albeit slowly.

I wanted to work on something with bigger impact in the next 2-5 years and "see" a lot of different stuff from different sectors (banking, telco, advertising, retail, etc).

BTW - since you'll be joining a "unicorn" and things are starting, you shuld try to have contact with end clients: knowing what users need / want / IGNORE is much more important than we (technical people) think it is.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

This reads more like a "lateral" move to me. And, if you make the change and if such a conversation is forced upon you, that's how I'd frame it.

P.S. Trading pay for equity. Taking an opportunity for greater initiative and growth. Etc.