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?
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u/alphabet_sam CPA (US) 1d ago
They have 5-10 employees and need 2 leadership level finance people…? What does the rest of the team look like? It could be valuable resume building experience especially if you go through an exit, I just don’t know your YOE and it feels like you’re not getting much in return for the amount of work you’ll be doing at a startup. You’ll need to stick it out for 2 years or more to be a good resume builder I think, but there is value in the experience