Ask HN: Have you ever taken a pay cut to pursue an interesting opportunity?

Yep, I have/am currently on the tail end of having done so. I generally work in construction because there is basically no i.t work in my region and where I live has some of the highest unemployment in Aus.

Last year in June I got hired by IBM to work as a hardware technician in the region I live in (Ive been trying to get into i.t for roughly a decade, I'm all self taught but it's my passion). I took roughly a 50% cut to the pay I earn in construction in order to work for IBM. It put me on a pay less than the mean and median wage of Australian workers, about 45k a year. Despite the incredibly low wage it was hands down the best work experience I've ever had. It's the third company in a decade of work that didn't try and screw me over as an employee by either stealing wages/underpaying me or making me do illegal shit. Construction is rife with that. It was like a breath of fresh air for my attitudes towards work.

Then a month and a half ago, IBM gave me notice of redundancy. Friday was my last day on the books. I've been battling some pretty crippling depression/stress since I was given notice. Having a job I'd literally been chasing for a decade ripped out from under me was like being stabbed in the guts. I spent my first week waking up between 2 and 4am dry wretching and wanting to throw up. It took about 3 weeks to get over it. Now I'm unemployed, but grateful for the experience. It's just a pity I'm probably never going to get back into I.T, jobs are rare as hens teeth here and I have bills to pay. Life outlook isn't that great post this experience, there isn't much of a future when your 30 in construction but don't have an actual trade. But eh onwards and upwards right?

A year and a half ago I left a job that I loved making web analytics dashboards to take a job as a robotics engineer at a small company writing navigation and control software, which I had no experience with.

I took a 20% pay cut, a gap which ended up increasing after my company counter-offered, but I had made up my mind. I thought about the cut like I was paying for an education in a new field.

For a while I had feelings of regret and doubt. There are lots of web jobs where I live (and of course there's remote work) but there aren't many robotics jobs beyond the one that I have. Am I backing myself into a lower paying, less in-demand corner? And it was particularly challenging to go from being a top performer to regularly getting my ass kicked (the ego is a real son-of-a-bitch), but it's been a high growth experience.

5 years from now the odds are probably higher that I'll be doing web work instead of robotics work, but there's little question in my mind that whatever I do this experience will provide more value than if I had stayed on my previous path. It's difficult to understate how much I've been learning. I just need to keep side projects going to maintain my web skills.

I still make less than I did when I left and much less than I would have been making on my trajectory, but I find the work interesting, engaging, and more meaningful, whatever that means.

Quitted my previous job and accepted a 20 hrs / week remote contract dev job with 40% pay cut, I haven't woken up by alarm clock for almost 1 year now, no more arduous commuting, plenty of time to spend with family and hobbies. Wrote and sold two books using the free time I have got.

Although I could have accepted full time job offer with higher pay, I think the free time to pursue hobbies / side businesses are more worth it for me

Went to do a PhD in bioinformatics at 1/4 of my previous salary. Soon after starting, I unexpectedly got awarded one of the best scholarships in existence which doubled the pay. Having the freedom of a PhD student and a 3k EUR net monthly salary is pretty sweet compared to how most people live.

Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that I cannot be happy doing an office job and will announce my decision to quit the employment next week. My current plan is to continue the PhD in the same lab, unpaid and remote, and find the least time-consuming job that will pay me 1k EUR a month - which will likely be writing PHP for one of my previous clients one day a week.

Always. There were a lot of failures, few successes, but the successes more than cover for the failures.

I make double the salary of other people of my age and ethnicity, which is not great when I take risks with 1000x payoffs, but it's not bad at all either.

Generally when you take risks, you should take the ones with good rates. Roll the dice enough times until you get somewhere good enough.

Yes I did, I worked production line for an auto plant(union wages)and applied for a maintenance job at the post office. The auto plant paid Very well but the joke was "a monkey could do my job but he would be to smart to keep doing it". The Post office job paid less than half my current paycheck. Doing maintenance work was like a hobby for me and I liked fixing things (cars mostly). I took the job after much debate with my soon to be EX. I have to say it was hard at first but after 2 or 3 years it all came together for me, I actually liked going to work and the pay ramped up to a little better than "good enough". With training to work on computers I found what I really loved doing and have been in IT since. I guess the story is while the money is important there are other things that you will not see if you are blinded by it (ha, clever boy)

Yes, so far so good. The new company treats there employees very well compared to other companies. I plan to stay until retirement.

All wealth is not measured in dollars. At some point you have to balance quality of life.