u/CharacterOwn3095

TLDR: Is it crazy to take an $80k TC pay cut to move from dull infrastructure plumbing back to an Applied AI role I love, based entirely on manager’s verbal promise to fix my compensation later?

Need an objective reality check on a career move vs. compensation loss.

Current Role: Senior Engineer at a large enterprise. The work is mostly infrastructure/platform plumbing. It’s stable but dry, and I’m worried about long-term role drift away from my core focus area in Applied AI/ML.

Comp: Total compensation is $80k higher than the competing offer.

The Move: Returning to my former employer (large corporate institution) in an Applied AI role. The day-to-day stack is exactly what I want to be doing: production-grade NLP, LLMs, Post-training and publish research.

The Catch: Because I initiated the return conversation, HR is sticking strictly to an internal policy that caps my offer at my old baseline salary. This creates the $80k TC deficit compared to my current job.

The Promise: My former manager told me they will take care of my compensation gap in the next 2 years.

The Dilemma:
Is it a mistake to walk away from $80k a year in cash just to avoid temporary role drift based on an executive's verbal promise?

How heavily can you actually rely on a senior corporate executive's verbal promise to fix your comp later? Would you take the financial hit for immediate role alignment, or stay put, pocket the extra cash, and try to pivot teams internally after a year?

Current TC- 350k
Offered TC - 270k

I recently left an Applied ML role for a new position that pays ~35% more. The challenge is that the new role turned out to be much more ML Platform focused than I expected. During interviews, I understood there would be some platform work, but I wasn’t fully clear on how much of the role would be infrastructure versus model development.

I’ve spent most of my career doing Applied ML (NLP, modeling, experimentation, delivering business impact), and that’s the type of work I enjoy the most. After joining, I’m realizing that platform engineering may not be the best fit for my interests.

The twist is that I left a stable role where I had strong relationships and was doing work I enjoyed. I’ve only been in the new role for a short time, so I’m trying to figure out whether:

1. I should give the new role more time and learn the platform side.
2. Try to move internally toward more Applied ML work.
3. Go back to my previous employer if that option exists.

For people who have made a similar Applied ML → MLOps/Platform transition, did you end up liking it? Any regrets or advice?