I work in a mid-size startup (~150 people) in the US. I am a software engineer. My company is doing well, so we're growing rapidly.
I'm in a ~15-member engineering team, writing software for the company. This team includes a senior engineer; let's call her Alice (Alice is not the only senior engineer in this team, there are three more). We all, including Alice, report to my manager.
Today, my manager explained to me that while the company is growing we're making some structural changes. So, they're creating a new, small group, which will be led by Alice. So if I accept this, I'll be reporting to Alice along with newly hired engineers. For the most part, nothing regarding my work will change other than the person I'm reporting to. They explained that Alice wanted to get some management experience and since we're growing fast, they decided to make a new group led by Alice, with focus X, and since I'm interested in X, they decided to move me to Alice's team.
My relationship with both Alice and my manager are very good. I'm very happy with my company, it has chill working ours, interesting work, good compensation, stellar benefits, etc... All is good so far.
I'm very inexperienced in this industry (this is my first year working), so I don't know what to make of this. I cannot decide whether this is me getting demoted, or just Alice getting promoted, or both at the same. If it's just Alice getting promoted, it's great. She's a good engineer, and she'll be a good engineer manager.
Also, I was planning to ask for a raise soon, maybe even today. Is this a bad time to ask for this, or is it acceptable for me to ask this to my current manager (this week) or new manager (next week)?
Any suggestions? I don't want to find bad things when there is none, but I also want to be defensive about my career. I wanted to ask this to random people before talking to Alice and accepting this offer.