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 l

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?