>Is it stupid to decrease your salary by that much when changing jobs, or is this something that everyone does in exchange for working at a smaller company? IM

>Is it stupid to decrease your salary by that much when changing jobs, or is this something that everyone does in exchange for working at a smaller company? IMHO it's dumb. "Get while the getting's good" is a good rule and the getting's really good at FAANGs these days. Unless the start up is doing some unique whizz bang thing that you're super interested in work is pretty much work. It's going to mostly be pretty boring stuff. Start slacking off at work a bit and start working on a side project that interests you to scratch your itch. Do that until you're set for life and then do whatever you want.