I know a brilliant guy who's great at negotiations and brings results. He makes about the top 0.5% in salary in the country. He also gets fired frequently for b

I know a brilliant guy who's great at negotiations and brings results. He makes about the top 0.5% in salary in the country. He also gets fired frequently for bullshit reasons (like slow response to emails) despite bringing the company lots of good money and top clients. It seems unfair to him, but the expectations of a superstar are a lot higher. You can negotiate a superstar ex-FAANG salary, but you have to justify why you're costing them 6 months of runway. If you're at a FAANG, you can increase click rates on ads by 0.1% a quarter and that would already justify your salary. At a FAANG, their question is how low they can pay you and where you compare to the rest of the applicant pool. For a startup, they have maybe 5 applicants. They want someone who can keep them alive long enough to the next round of funding, up until acquisition. Sometimes that means some solid first team players. Sometimes it's a star. Sometimes it's just some interns.