My experience has been similar to yours but in the Valley, and I have a strong set of GitHub contributions as well on top of a clearly sharply skyrocketing work

My experience has been similar to yours but in the Valley, and I have a strong set of GitHub contributions as well on top of a clearly sharply skyrocketing work profile chock full of engineering accomplishments & roles. It is frustrating that startups do not want to pay anywhere close to what reflects what that quality of engineering may entail. Companies like Google will pay $100k more than what typical startups will pay for quality senior engineers as far as I can tell, and that too is even a bit of a bargain. Increased responsibilities do not justify a shortfall of that much when it means it is close to 33-50% of a potential candidate's salary that is chopped off for them.