Moving to a lower paid job in a different country for more optionality?
I work in England (£31k / 35,8€ TC) doing jr model based design embedded systems, and have been offered to do work in jr Ultra Low Power embedded systems in Lithuania (€31,200 + month bonus TC).
The reason I want to move is because at my current job with lots of firefighting during my tenure I've learnt very little outside of model-based design hard skills. Where these skills in England are mostly used by defence/aerospace, jobs which are often blocked only for UK citizens, while I am not a UK national.
The ULP job is offering to do "old-school" embedded on 16/32 bit microcontrollers for a positively growing utilities company, which I feel would course-correct my skills a lot faster and then put me in a market where there are a lot more IoT companies that don't require me having citizenship.
Obvious downsides are a significant financial loss, both in raw money and the extra taxation in Lithuania, moving away from friends - upsides being a chance to steer my career in a direction I know I would want to go, and have more chances to explore later on in a big city compared to a small town.
I think after 2 years or so, I'd probably have the skills to return to England's small IoT market if I want to, but I find myself struggling to break into it while doing model-based embedded here.
There is very minimal friction to move outside of the above.