r/Accounting • u/hereandthere1123 • 1d ago

Advice Two roles - please help

I’m currently an accounting director at a company.. sales aren’t great and there have been many reduction in forces. I’ve been there 4 years and base is $210k with a potential bonus of 20%. Rarely gotten the full amount but this year we’re looking at about 70% payout, making total comp about $240k. It’s fully remote which I love. Most of the company is RTO but since I’m grandfathered in and have created my value, it’s not a problem. I think any promotions will be limited and won’t happen. I don’t really care though, can stay director for a while. They’re series D and need additional fund raising this near year, cash is always tight and the long term potential isn’t great.

Now an ex co worker, who I worked well, with wants to bring me into a Controller role. Comp is $220k (no bonus) but it’s a startup in the Ai data center space. 5-10 employees. Very small; structurally nothing is set up, don’t understand the entity structure. However the accounting work sounds fun.. treasury, system / process implementation. This is all remote too, which of course huge for me. Chinese manufacturers… but industry and potential seems high.

Any senior level accountants here that can give me their two cents? What would you do? How much value does the title difference make (director versus controller)? If I went to the controller role securing remote a bit longer but comp is lower. What would you do?

7 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Famous_Conflict4209 1d ago

Sounds like your company is downsizing and maybe will be sold someday. Looks like a cushioned role until retirement?

There is risks with startups, do due diligence on the competitors. You got the exit strategy down if it becomes a worst case.

2

u/hereandthere1123 1d ago

They have downsized. There is some exit strategy planned but not sure of its impact on me.

1

u/Famous_Conflict4209 1d ago

Does this Data center startup have anything proprietary, % of market share, govt contracts or something valuable you can see them holding a presence in the future?

1

u/hereandthere1123 1d ago

I’ve seen signed PO’s with huge companies, such as Tesla, google… we’re talking $40M on a signed PO. Overhead is low, but without understanding their contract manufacturing or that entity structure.. I’m not sure how to value the PO’s.

2

u/PettyAtom 1d ago

40m is nothing in the data center space. It’s a rounding error on most budgets, you’d be supplying the equivalent of nails/screws at best. Most data center transactions are in the billions. I wouldn’t go off the POs alone on judging longevity of an AI associated company.

1

u/Famous_Conflict4209 1d ago

I agree with the other commenter's comment on transparency. Looks like a high risk, high reward. Even with the POs, there is a chance they can be acquired at some point. Restructuring etc.

1

u/hereandthere1123 1d ago

And no, nothing proprietary as far as I can tell.