[itamarst]

You're assuming you have two options:

1. Stay at current, unpleasant job. 2. Take a huge paycut.

But there are other jobs. So what you do is, you start applying elsewhere, and meanwhile you try to negotiate with the startup.

The chances are that they won't go up that much. That's OK, you can:

1. Stall them, and use existing offer for negotiating with another company that gives you an offer. Even just mentioning you have another offer is helpful.

2. Negotiate for something else. "Hey, this is 50% less than my current salary. Would you be willing to raise it by 20% and then have me work 4 days a week?" I haven't done the math to figure out if this makes sense, but there might be some combination of hours and higher offer that might work for you. Most startups are unlikely to say yes, but I have successfully worked shorter work weeks at startups.

[CRConrad]

> "...Would you be willing to raise it by 20% and then have me work 4 days a week?" I haven't done the math to figure out if this makes sense,

At three days a week, it "makes sense" arithmetically: that gives the same daily salary they have now. Working on the money end in stead, you'd need to ask for a sixty percent raise to achieve parity at four days a week.