Ask HN: What does a salary represent within a salary band?

I had an interesting conversation today about salaries and salary bands.

In summary, there were two points of view.

One defended that a salary should represent the responsibilities of the employee for the role within the salary band. In other words, if you barely meet the requirements for the role you would be in the lower end, but if you meet most of what's expected you would be in the upper end.

Contrary to this was the second point of view. In this case, the defenders argued that your salary only represent your "negotiation skills". In other words, the salary will be based on the initial negotiation before joining rather than on performance.

I'm curious about what do you think about this. What does a salary within a salary band mean for you?