Comment by deathanatos

Literally every engineering director I've ever seen says exactly what you're saying. E.g., "as much pay increase as I could possibly": for my experience and growth, an employer I worked with offered a -6.6% increase in real salary for my time there. (≈3 years tenure.) Negative. The work was also … not what I'd like to be doing. So between "stay with company" and "find different company", it shouldn't be too hard to predict which option was more appealing.