Honestly: The problems started when you decided to move past the initial miscommunication because the money was "good enough". Kind of hard to tell what actuall

Honestly: The problems started when you decided to move past the initial miscommunication because the money was "good enough". Kind of hard to tell what actually happened, but when you accepted that lower level (I mean I'm assuming that your contract and etc. also has this lower level in it instead of the proper one) you did a soft reset on what the hiring manager thought of you. The only correct decision was, IMO, "Hey I interviewed for X but now I am getting to be in X-2? Fix this or I'm not signing the contract". Once the manager knows that the "money is good enough" to keep you you should get ready for fuckery. Will this have an impact on your future employment chances? Absolutely, IMO you will certainly get asked as to why you took a step down in responsibility/pay. Companies see your latest job as the baseline, or at least they do in 99% of the CVs they see, and perhaps more importantly taking a step down usually devalues all your previous experiences in the hiring manager's eyes("Wait you were a principal dev at Small Company X but now are 2 levels below that at Public Corp Y? How bad were you as principal dev at X that you had to drop down 2 levels?"). All of the above is based on my experience in finance, but pretty sure it applies to tech as well.