Career Advice: Would you take a step back to advance forward?

In software engineering, some companies have much higher standards than others. I'm just guessing, but often this situation happens when you are trying to step up from a lower quality employer to a higher quality employer.

Money is more meaningful than titles. Would you be making more money as an Engineer II at the new company than as a team lead at the old company? If you aren't, then it's probably a step backward.

If you would be making more money, then this is a step forward. In fact, it's a great opportunity, because you can get even further in your career by getting promoted to the "senior" level at your new workplace.

It seems the biggest question is, “do you really want to move to Switzerland?” That’s a big change.

The next biggest question is, how will this affect you financially, not just the pay, but the final savings after all the taxes and expenses.

And I think third is the career trajectory, if you really want to be in management or are happy as an individual contributor.

There are lots of jobs out there. You can find a better fit if this isn’t the right one.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

Would you say I should bring up my concern to them? I don't need promises or guarantees, but I would have liked to know what is their career trajectory and promotion system.

Absolutely. If you are tempted to turn this job down because it’s not the right fit, instead of turning it down, you should bring your exact concerns to them, both that you feel you are already leading a team successfully and that you want a clear pathway to leadership responsibility again. An excellent employer is going to listen and adjust to your concerns.

The average employer on the other hand is just going to lie and tell you exactly what you want to hear so they can hire you, consequences be damned.

Roles are meaningless, every company have their own. If you think you are senior, you'll put the "Senior..." in your linkedin profile (and CV) to get future offers.

So I don't think you're taking a step back at all (unless you are getting a salary cut as well, then yes, don't do it).

I did exactly the same: I was tech lead at company X (staff engineer) but then I quit to join company Y working just as a normal senior engineer. I got a 20% bump in salary raise... and now I have ahead more levels with the senior level to grown to (and also levels within the staff level as well)... whereas at company X I as already thinking about switching to management (I didn't want that either).

Also, I do always the same kind of job no matter where I am: if I can lead, I lead, if I can mentor I mentor... it doesn't really matter if that's my role or not.

If you're really a leader, then they will notice and will promote you within their imaginary and meaningless career path ladder.

This is a common position and it's really a choice each person has to make on their own because it really does vary person to person. Let me give you an example, when I was younger I was a pretty good programmer and I rose through the ranks very quickly and got a little bit of notoriety. I was self trained but I had some mentors that were real heavy hitters and they taught me a lot. Anyway I was given the option to go work for a very well know SV god father where I'd be a mid-level guy. The other option was to go work for a no name startup where I could sail the ship. At the time I had just gotten done working for another start up and I was looking for something better so I went with being an underling at a really big company. It was really cool to do some bleeding edge work and to work with people that were absolute geniuses, but I am not a geniuses despite what my mother thinks. It was like going from playing sports in uni vs playing sports as a professional, everyone was really, really good so instead of standing out I was just another brink in the wall. For me this caused me to really step up my game just to keep up with the crowd, something I wouldn't have to have done at the startup. It was a doubled edged sword, there was a lot of growth on my end but no rewards, I was just average for the company, if I had went the other direction I wouldn't have had to step up my game but I would have been the top dog. It's big fish/small pond syndrome you have to pick what you want to be, neither is wrong.

I am in the US and don't know EU dynamics in terms of comp and lifestyle but one thing that is true globally is that experience and levels are not achievements or badges such as one accumulates in a game. The overall culture and the relationships with the individual people should be the emphasis in terms of understanding opportunities for growth. Ask yourself whether the people are people you want to learn from and grow with, across all the different dimensions that personal growth entails.

Having held roles with all of the titles you mention, I'd say relax and take the advice of a few here:

    * "do you really want to move to Switzerland?"
    * "Roles are meaningless"
    * "sounds like a signal that they like you as a candidate"

These resonated with me because Switzerland sounds awesome, roles are meaningless, and signal/noise ratio is a great way to think about hiring. Many people have great signal but drag a freight train of noise behind them.

Having held the principal title when I was 27, most gigs beyond that were steps down in terms of title, salary, or benefits. Doesn't really matter as long as the next people hiring you can see your current value given your previous trajectory.

My path is only unusual to the extent that I worked in small R&D labs and pre-VC startups so the value equation of a greenfield prototype hacker is really not what you know or have experienced, but "how fast can you learn because we just made the thing yesterday, QA'ed it today, and would like to ship tomorrow", "how fast can you go from napkin sketch to believable demo" and then "how fast can you ship clean code vs. that mess the CTO dreamed up at 3 AM?"

Your trajectory may be different.

Hey there, I am a swiss, and an engineer here for more than 10 years now (BEFORE ETH student). To be honest, I had that naive thought too before, but it never worked. I changed already several jobs, and the highest I got is a team lead. Thing is, in the recent years in Switzerland, somehow it is very hard to progess on the ledder upwards. I wouldn't say I am not ambitious, just never got that further promotion. Probably I could wait more, and invest more time, until it happens. Who knows. But this is just my observation.

Many of my friends are making additional studies into management, or sales. Some landed Head positions.

Point is, I wouldn't say that it is a step back. It is rather a completely new step, a change. Could be for good of for not that good. Depends on how much time are you willing to invest? Maybe in your current position you will advance further if you wait. Also consider the language barrier. Sometimes it makes a bit of difference. ;)

What are you after? A change of scenery? Money? Prestige? Title?

Why do you want to leave your current job? Money? Don't like the work? Don't like the people? Bored, and you want something different? Can't advance any further where you are?

If you're after money, look at the money (counting taxes and cost of living).

If you're after advancement/title/prestige/future income growth, the problem is that the future is uncertain. If you have decided that you're not going to get what you want where you are, I would not take a step backward to maybe get it in the future. I would continue where I was, and keep looking, and move when I could go somewhere where I actually did get what I was looking for.

Any distance to culture and language detriments potential for leadership positions.

If you move, please be aware that it may not be possible to move into leadership for a long time or never.

Also be aware that you adapt to the new culture after some time. Hence, returning requires readaption again.

If they placed you at the top of the lower band, that sounds like a signal that they like you as a candidate but either want or have to avoid placing outside hires into type of role.

My current employer will generally hire ICs or Senior leadership from outside. The “inside baseball” of the company makes it difficult to succeed in middle management/team lead roles.

If the money is good you need to decide whether leading people is important to you. If it is, that’s ok, but this provably isn’t the right gig. If you don’t care, this might be a good role.

Don't worry too much about the role. You could ask yourself 2 questions what will I get paid / hour and what will I be doing/learning on the job. Maybe you're in the low role because your current pay is relatively low and your offer puts you low in that hierarchy.

Where are you moving from? Personally I'd think that going in low give you room to grow in terms of money/role.

Adding to other advice here: make sure you know how much salary will be in your pocket after taxes and living expenses. Switzerland is an expensive country, and comparing just the absolute number could make you feel very miserable once you are living there.

Other than this, titles are irrelevant IMO. Probably they just put you into the title with the same salary band.

Do you want to lead a team? Do you want to become a manager or stay a developer? I would think more about that. You're very close to becoming a manager and no longer performing IC work like coding. That's a great career path, but you can also push to stay in a technical career path and go down the principle engineer route.

TBH If there's no meaningful salary bump, location adjusted aside, I'd say they're trying to lowball you.

I'll probably do it if it's something I really want to do, even salary cut is fine. But other than that I don't know why I should do that.

As others have mentioned, the real question is what your goal is and whether or not this is a step that gets you closer to realizing it.

If your goal is more leadership and less of an IC role, then what you're proposing is probably a step in the wrong direction.

If your goal is to live in Switzerland, then you just have to ask yourself if you're OK with the drop in order to achieve your goal.

If your goal is to make a change in type of programming being done (e.g. from web front-end to video games) then taking a title (and possibly pay) drop is reasonable. You're going from being an possible authority in a particular domain to someone who is learning. Your current skills and experiences will be highly valuable, you'll learn faster than others, but you'll still have a lot to learn. I don't know how things work in the EU, but here in the States most likely you'll find yourself needing to job hop again in 2-3 years in order to get back to where you originally were (or more).

Answering your actual question, though... I did make that leap in my career and it was worth it. The change I made wasn't so drastic as my example. I had an end goal in mind and came up with a path to get there. It took me a while, but each step was lateral (my current skills were highly applicable) and I learned a lot each step. My path was * video games * video game telemetry (databases and data ETL) * big data at Disney * biotech (where I am now).

TL;DR - what's your goal? Does this change get you closer to realizing it?

The answer to the question "do you want a Swiss salary right now?" answers your question too.

Is the salary higher?

Do you want to move to Switzerland?

Do you want to do the Engineer II job?

If all answers are yes, take it.