> There are plenty of high skilled people who have been blown away by an offer they thought was incredibly generous, only to discover they were actually lowball

> There are plenty of high skilled people who have been blown away by an offer they thought was incredibly generous, only to discover they were actually lowballed. Been there done that - Not incredibly low balled. But probably 10%. But as you learn the industry, have a network of former coworkers who don’t mind sharing salaries and external recruiters, it gets easier and you just job hop. This is mostly on the enterprise/Corp dev side of development where most developers work. It’s quite easy to find out compensation for the larger more well known tech companies at places like levels.fyi. Before anyone thinks I’m putting down “enterprise developers”, that’s what I did my entire career from 1996-2020. For all intents and purposes, that’s still what I do. I now also write a shit ton of yaml, HCL, PowerPoint slides, and PRFAQs at $BigTech and “consult”.