Thanks for the detailed answer. I having a really different experience though. - Negotiation : I am finding that for a given "level" (SD1,E3 etc...) the wiggle

Thanks for the detailed answer. I having a really different experience though. - Negotiation : I am finding that for a given "level" (SD1,E3 etc...) the wiggle room for negotiation is not that high, i have never been able to negotiate more than 5% more on the base salary.It might be because i usually get a competitive first offer, but there is no way to verify that -Job fit : good to know; I do know a friend who seems to get pretty high salary compared to his experience and domain. I kinda assume that the fact that he was very active in conferences and blogging was the root cause -Company : Very true, the delta between companies is almost unreal... - Competing offer : agree, the only advice i give to my friend is to bundle their interview into the same two week, not only allows you to amortized you study time across multiple interviews, but having a "competing offer" from a respected company is gold.