This would be helpful if it were 1994 and there was lots of what economists call asymmetric information, but now you can price-check a company's offer in second

This would be helpful if it were 1994 and there was lots of what economists call asymmetric information, but now you can price-check a company's offer in seconds. Besides, companies can also easily see what the going rate is and normalize their budgets accordingly. I recently went through the job search process and almost all companies offered similar rates. If you're north of 100K (and I assume most experienced software engineers are) realistically 10-20K more will not make a significant impact on your quality of life. We're talking an extra $500-1K a month. Nice, but doesn't exactly catapult you into the 1%. As long as your salary is in a competitive range it's more important to focus on finding the right fit of industry, company, people and projects. Wouldn't over-weight salary negotiations, especially in a day where both employers and job-seekers can quickly ascertain market rates.