Title promotions are overrated, especially 1st line managers imho". Also, manager titles, while valuable inside the company, are not asy easy to transfer over to another company if you need to move, especially first level managers. Throughout my career, I've bounced between management and pure technical contributions, and frankly the pay for me relatively was about the same.
My advice, if you like dealing with personel, doing reviews, help mentoring people, than perhaps move into management.
if you are a good salesman AND enjoy being a salesman, you should stick with that and even figure ways to hone your skills even further. Good salespeople are always needed, and I would say the old saying "same technique, different media" applies to sales skills. Contrary to popular belief, Salesmanship is a skill that frankly not everyone can do well. If you are one of the people that can do well, you're going to always be in demand.
I would personally NOT take a salary cut to manage people just for the sake of managing people, unless you love that more than Sales… OR unless by NOT taking this position, someone you don't like that will make your life hell will be your supervisor now and will get in your way….
If you're a sales hotshot, you could easily find employment and ask what you want the next time around. No offense, if you're a good salesman, there's absolutely no reason why you cannot be making double of what you're seeing now in the right company. But you need to be honest with yourself and figure out how you rank as a salesman. Again, I'm assuming your in sales, and aren't something like a "sales engineer". Small title difference, big responsibility differences. Consider not only what your current company is offering, but how your decisions would benefit you in the future. Because they only thing that is constant is you and what you can do. Companies come and go. What you bring to the table doesn't.
Regardless, cash is KING right now. I've always heard stories of companies prior to IPOing doing a house cleaning and laying off people just to make the numbers look good. If that happens, how pissed would you be if you traded in your salary for options that no longer you can do anything with.
However, life is a gamble, and if you feel like this company is the next qualcomm, well life is too short to wonder why not….This is coming from a person that left millions worth of stock options on the table by leaving qualcomm, and subsequently leaving millions on the table prior to an IPO of a small startup. I was always in the right place, just never at the right time 🙂
You know, the other thing you should consider is that if you really are that good, you really should be asking your company to giving to stock options. You know the old saying. Squeeky wheel gets the oil.
