People who took a paycut to join a company how did it go for you?

Why switch? Why not switch? What were the motivations that you had when you thought of switching and whether the result was favourable to you or not?

For anyone stepping into the world of building, just be okay with the above. It'll be true, no matter how much you fall.

Will it affect my career if i join a role that has a lower package than my previous one? One can say almost half. The only reason im joining is because of the work and growth i can see in the future.

Background: I work in a D2C consumer product startup, we have an in-house website and a growing tech team of 7 people. The whole business team is 100+. I'm a '23 grad from a tier 1 engineering college. I joined the company back in September when the job market was at the bottom and I had to take a 40% pay cut (21LPA to 12LPA) (while switching (the last company ran out of funding). I was at a higher than avg base in my previous role but the current role is 20% below the average. (15LPA) The company is in a growth stage and lots of processes are yet to be defined which leads to a lot of chaos but I get a lot of freedom as well. My manager is aware of the whole situation and we had also negotiated a 6-month review for ESOP allotment. My monthly reviews have been going well and we have shipped some good improvements and features over the last few months.

Looking forward to some nice stories from the community. Some positive, some not so positive - what made you take a pay cut?

Are there folks on the vine who have experienced previous down cycles? Financial crisis of 08-09 or the funding winter in 16-17? What would you suggest someone who has been laid off on how to navigate career trajectories given the uncertainities ahead. Many folks would have planned their career paths but due to the change in situations all of this has gone for a toss. Should people settle for lower pays or lower designations? How does it impact the trajectory ahead Other folks who have read about this or discussed this with others do pour in your thoughts

I have been one of the lucky ones to have made a switch to a new company just before the layoff season began. I had multiple offers at the time, but ultimately chose one where I was getting to build something from scratch in a large organization at my current designation and was also getting a good hike (20%). The offers I dropped had a better title with a team to manage. However, the options were to either take a pay cut to join a Series A company or a large organization with a known bad work culture. Off late, I'm feeling a little frustrated with the new job. I feel like I won't get chance to move to a better title for atleast a year. Since the recession period has kicked in, the new team needs to show results in order to get a promotion and the targets are quite steep for that. There is some learning that I have while building this product and that is definitely a motivation, but also feel I'm missed out an opportunity to move to next level in career. On one hand, I feel like I should have taken the pay cut to join the series A startup. On the other hand, I also feel that I should be happy that I'm getting comfortably more pay at a time where folks are having poor appraisals, pay cuts or even getting laid off. Given a choice between title and money what would you choose?

I got three job offers for SDE2. I accepted the offer (30LPA) with the lowest pay but loved the interview process, loved how they didn't waste my time (offer rolled in 2 weeks). Even their Google reviews and Glassdoor has 5 stars. Early stage startup, but they have a tech product with a very bright future (seed funded). And culture is amazing, founders are bright. Second offer was from a mid-sized fintech startup (series C funded). Offer was for 34 lakhs. The interview process was okay but that set me off was that they wanted to conduct another design round after my final Hiring Manager interview as their team categorised my interview as "Weak Hire". They even told me that to my face. 😂 I cleared the subsequent design round but the whole process was lengthy (1 month). Third offer is from an AI company with horrible glassdoor reviews. They took 2 months of time to finish the entire interview process. Even the product doesn't seem like it will survive in next 4-5 years. Offer from them is 42 LPA. I got laid off a couple of months ago, so instead of higher pay I went to the company where I could learn more, get good peers, and increase my skillset. I hope that this decision makes sense. I tried to negotiate with Company A but they were unwilling to go beyond 30, I did mention I have other offers which are higher. I didn't include the joining bonus and ESOP components in all companies, but they are there.