What do you think ‘the market’ is? The market is made up of people just like you, a pool of bids and offers, with bidders (that is, employers or clients) trying to get the best price for a good or service, and the merchants (employees) trying to make the most money from the provision of those services—or at the very least to make a sale at all.
Markets are most efficient when there is full transparency. Unfortunately you don't know the salaries of the people you work with, or the budgets of the people you work for. We have to accept this information asymmetry as a fact of life, because your colleagues probably feel uncomfortable discussing their compensation packages, and your managers don't reveal their budgets to you specifically so they can save money. They may have been willing to pay you $100k, but if you settle for $80k they aren't going to argue, and you've just put $20k back into their budget that they were planning on giving you anyway. That doesn't mean a lot to them, but to you that could have been a new car and a luxury holiday.
The fact that you don't understand the importance of leverage in negotiations (that is, making yourself seem extremely valuable to the organisation) is precisely why you aren't on $200k or more at the moment.
And please don't kid yourself that you'll get to avoid all of this stuff by joining a startup. A founder or CEO of a small company is going to be even more aggressive in getting you to sign on the dotted line for a low price, since the company may be funded out of their own pocket (as opposed to a manager controlling a budget).
And what about founding a startup? Well, you'll have to decide on a price to set your customers. Again, you need those unique selling points and some great marketing to make your customers feel like they can't function without you. If you decide to go down the VC route, you'll be wrapped up in negotiations and due diligence for weeks or months, and if you don't bring the full force of your negotiating abilities, you'll be signing away a large share of equity at a low price that you may regret for the rest of your life.
No-one, absolutely no-one gets to skip the negotiations and still come out the other end with a 'fair' price or salary. These are facts of life, and whilst I don't think they're particularly unpleasant, if you decide to ignore them you'll be left behind as the rest of us shoot up the career ladder.
Markets are most efficient when there is full transparency. Unfortunately you don't know the salaries of the people you work with, or the budgets of the people you work for. We have to accept this information asymmetry as a fact of life, because your colleagues probably feel uncomfortable discussing their compensation packages, and your managers don't reveal their budgets to you specifically so they can save money. They may have been willing to pay you $100k, but if you settle for $80k they aren't going to argue, and you've just put $20k back into their budget that they were planning on giving you anyway. That doesn't mean a lot to them, but to you that could have been a new car and a luxury holiday.
The fact that you don't understand the importance of leverage in negotiations (that is, making yourself seem extremely valuable to the organisation) is precisely why you aren't on $200k or more at the moment.
And please don't kid yourself that you'll get to avoid all of this stuff by joining a startup. A founder or CEO of a small company is going to be even more aggressive in getting you to sign on the dotted line for a low price, since the company may be funded out of their own pocket (as opposed to a manager controlling a budget).
And what about founding a startup? Well, you'll have to decide on a price to set your customers. Again, you need those unique selling points and some great marketing to make your customers feel like they can't function without you. If you decide to go down the VC route, you'll be wrapped up in negotiations and due diligence for weeks or months, and if you don't bring the full force of your negotiating abilities, you'll be signing away a large share of equity at a low price that you may regret for the rest of your life.
No-one, absolutely no-one gets to skip the negotiations and still come out the other end with a 'fair' price or salary. These are facts of life, and whilst I don't think they're particularly unpleasant, if you decide to ignore them you'll be left behind as the rest of us shoot up the career ladder.