> You can't really know if you're underpaid for what you're doing if nobody else is paying more. I was talking relative to my coworkers at the same job. It ca

> You can't really know if you're underpaid for what you're doing if nobody else is paying more. I was talking relative to my coworkers at the same job. It can quickly become apparent how much your coworkers are making relative to you if you pay attention to subtle things like vacations they take, what they did on their weekends, the cars they drive, where they live, etc. In my case, teams had been "right-sized" such that I solely owned systems that at one point had a total of 13 people assigned to them, with no help. Yes, I held myself to a constrained budget to contribute to 401k, save as much as I could elsewhere and had a modest, yet nice apartment. Yet, my older coworkers had less responsibility, worked shorter hours, drove nicer cars, owned houses and took extravagant vacations where I drove a modest used car, rented and my "vacations" were to visit my parents (although, admittedly, airfare to visit my parents is high - it'd be cheaper to fly to Europe than visit my parents in the US, and I live in the US). Thing is, for years, at comp time, I'd been arguing for a larger raise than bonus. I was getting a token $5k/year raise, but several 10Ks in bonus. Salary is generally a given (sure, they could in theory lower it, but rarely do healthy companies do that if you're performing), plus, typically your slice of the bonus pool is also partially determined by your salary. So, yeah, it took trying to quit, with an offer in hand, to get my salary adjusted to where it should have been given my tenure at the company and the level of responsibility I had. Once they realized I was serious and was ready to walk, over a weekend, they gave me a nearly 30% intrayear raise. It wasn't quite what I wanted, but it put me on par with my coworkers and it was several 10s of thousands over the offer I was willing to walk for. Also, the offer I walked away from was from one of the FAANG, and I won't say which. Apparently, having walked away from the offer has effectively black balled me from progressing in interviews with them. I've had a few phone screens with them since that I think I did well in, just to get radio silence from them. Not even a response from the initial recruiter. I've stopped entertaining of even responding to inquiries from the particular company.