Me too, and also everyone else. A healthy discussion is good and especially if you change jobs you should try to make sure you know where you want to end up money wise. Also, if you feel undercompensated for the work you do you should tell your boss and demand an increase. But the fact that we have now a whole industry consulting on how to optimize for compensation is cringe to me: if it is normal to other people, so be it, but I don't like it. I think the whole "optimization process" is a combination or people skills & politics (win hearts & minds as the article author said). Also what people seem to forget is that this whole negotiation phase is just at the start. If you have a very good job, your compensation will grow over the years with a very high rate, otherwise you are at the mercy of team politics and people relations. I think the FAANGS know this and that's why they pay relatively low(as a % of TC) base salaries and even lower cash bonuses and pay with "promises" i.e equity. So far the party (bull market) has been going on and on so that's how people get the TC growth and that's why people negotiate so hard at the start: I get it. It's just not for me. I also feel cringe about it at the personal level: I often talk to talk to people at those or similar companies and some (not all) are ultra focused on their TC, but then we chat about technical stuff and they don't even know what zero-mq is (not my litmus test for developer ability but it's illustrative: they spend their time on levels fyi more than wanting to improve their job). Long story short, if people are happy to be paid in equity that you only get 1/4 of by definition then it leaves less competition for me in my field, so I should actually be grateful and not cringe. Thanks for making me realise this.

edit: I never even touched on factors like productivity and its main explanation factors: intelligence and hard work. If I have more intelligence, and I work ultra hard, I should be paid more than you. That's why compensation is mega hetoroscedastic: that is why we have bands and why the bands are so wide and there are outliers. What made me also cringe is the people who are clearly not the "cream of cream" negotiate and get to such places: if the "process" did not exist and they were just interviewed technically for 5-6 rounds they would have flopped and the company would save itself some troubles. My 2 cents.

It's not totally clear what claims you're making w.r.t. the compensation at G/F/A/A (Netflix pays 100% cash and lets you convert to discounted options at will, if you want). Obviously it's true that the performance of the market the last decade or so has hugely benefited engineers working at those companies. But the base salaries they pay at any given level are still pretty close to top-of-market when compared to companies that pay all-cash, or cash + illiquid equity (again modulo exceptions like Netflix). Even if you joined Google as a senior engineer and on your first day the stock dropped by 50%, you'd still be making more than you would be at a place that didn't have an equity component to the compensation!

> they don't even know what zero-mq is

Why does it matter that they've never heard of a specific library? If they're working in a domain which requires something like that, most companies at that scale will either be using it or a similar home-grown alternative, which they'll be familiar with. If they aren't, then what does it matter?

> you only get 1/4 of by definition

Not totally clear what that's supposed to mean but in any case Google & Facebook (along with an increasing number of other tech companies) no longer have a 1-year cliff - your equity starts vesting immediately on a monthly basis after you join; it's significantly de-risked.

> if the "process" did not exist and they were just interviewed technically for 5-6 rounds they would have flopped

What exactly do you think the interview process at these companies is, if not multiple rounds of technical interviews?