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Comment by somenomadicguy | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but I spent most of my career heavily negotiating for high salaries which set impossibly high expectations. I've been working in IT in one form or another since I was 12, and I just no longer have the will or the energy to perform at a super senior level. I just want to live my life in Europe, make enough money to support my daughter and have some adventures, and deliver at a level that doesn't require 60 hour weeks or soul-crushing stress.

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Hey, be cheap, don't waste effort on negotiation if you are ok with less money! I think that's totally reasonable. Just don't broadcast it that way. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Second this. Maybe emphasizing your preference for achieving some work life balance is another angle to consider.

Yes, I do see what you mean. I guess I look at it as a white male statistically I'm far more likely to oversell myself, and I've certainly done that before. Now I might overcompensate for that. I would much rather set low/mid-level expectations, than sell myself as a "rockstar" (god I hate that term) and set myself up for burn-out.

Being cheap is funny. In San Francisco at my last job I was around $175k before the expected bonuses which never materialized, as they tend not to @ start-ups. To no avail I tried hard to sell myself on "$100k and I only work 9 months per year", but there's such a false notion that "bodies in the seat mean productivity". I ended up finding a gig around $110k, which provides me a far better lifestyle in the cheaper part of the Balkans/Near-East than I could afford in any US city where I would want to live.

This is part of the problem: golden handcuffs.

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