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.