Have never encountered this sort of thing in my long career, but I have seen numerous people take a pay cut to work fewer days in the week. It was assumed that

Have never encountered this sort of thing in my long career, but I have seen numerous people take a pay cut to work fewer days in the week. It was assumed that less critical tasks would go to these individuals, though their seniority in each case remained the same. Your situation is a strange one. If one of our engineers came to me and said something similar it would be a difficult call. Switching to a different team with less responsibility would make more sense, though.