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 c

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.