Probably Agatha is being paid less at the new job because she was paid a comparatively low salary at her previous one. To a degree, companies have to consider t

Probably Agatha is being paid less at the new job because she was paid a comparatively low salary at her previous one. To a degree, companies have to consider the candidate's salary history when they make an offer -- say their target for a position is a $175K salary, and someone they really want to hire is already making that at their current company. They have to decide whether or not they can offer more and, if so, whether to. The flip side of that, though, is that if someone in a much, much lower-salary market than Silicon Valley (e.g., virtually all of them) is making $80K, you could offer the the $175K you'd offer someone locally, but you could just offer $120K. Look! It's a 50% salary increase! Fantastic...? > Also, lumping them all under SWE II is dishonest (to hide the disparity) While I picked SWE II arbitrarily, the notion that there was such a wide range of salaries offered for essentially the same position seem to be the point of the comment I was replying to. If it's a startup they'll probably have squishier titles, like just "Developer" or "Engineer", but the point is that if you can have two people on the same team ostensibly at the same level where one is making three times what the other does, it's…curious.