Need help if it's worth moving to a small ai startup from a well established company
Hi all,
I've been at my current company for more than 6 years now. I've grown a lot, but for the past year I've been feeling disinterested in the work.
So I started applying to random companies without any prep, and got an offer at an AI startup of around 30 employees. The core team is in the US, but they're hiring remote in India. I have 10 years of experience overall, and I'm at L6 / Staff Developer level. My current company is solid — probably one of the top Indian startups of the last decade.
I'm thinking of accepting the offer, resigning, and continuing to apply to other companies during my 3-month notice period. If nothing else comes through, I'll join this startup as a backup.
My current comp is little more than 50 lpa. How much should I negotiate, given that the startup hasn't raised funding in last few years and there's no clarity on how it'll perform?
HR is offering around a 20% hike plus some ESOPs. But I'm also getting calls from larger companies that are starting interviews at similar hike percentages.
Should I negotiate harder? How should I approach this?
And more broadly — is joining an AI startup better for the future? At my current company, the most I can do is learn how to apply AI in SDLC. At this startup, I'd actually be building an AI product.