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 fi

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!