> And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday I have

> And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday I have never had this illusion, but I think my wife has had that idea (for me, not for her), and I had to disabuse her of that notion :) We're not in a terribly HCOL area to begin with, nor in a major tech hub, so... traditional w2 9-5 jobs, even in tech, are, for most senior folks I know, topping out in the mid $100s. If you want to count 401k/insurance/etc in total comp, you're still generally going to be under $200k (probably even fully loaded cost). Not so say there aren't any higher paying jobs, but they're relatively limited, and are going to have higher competition, etc.