#2 just means that you won't get as much of an increase as you might have thought, and one should consider the net increase as opposed to gross increase when judging whether the new salary is worth the new responsibilities, relocation, whatever. I suppose if you were at the very top of your bracket and you get bumped over the edge, the combination of a higher rate and possible loss of some other bonuses (like ability to deduct student loan interest) could mean a net loss in some situations. Worth thinking about, anyway.
#4 is silly. If the max is $200k, how is being stuck at $200k for 5 years worse than starting at $150k and working your way up to $200k over the next 5 years? Is the warm fuzzy feeling of "growth" worth the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars?
#5 isn't a backfire. If you're the type who will never be happy with your salary, you'll be no less unhappy with a larger salary than you were with a smaller salary.
I agree that #1 is a big backfire. But is it worth keeping one's salary deliberately low to avoid being a target? If the market is that dicey, maybe it's time to look into a change of career.
#3...as someone else said, the people hiring you don't necessarily have the right to your prior salary info, and if you won't take a pay cut, that's your problem. Goes back to #4--are you worse off working at $90k for a while and then having to go to $80k, or having been at $80k all along, just to avoid the icky feeling of "pay cut"?
"The ultimate freedom is the executive who says, 'Pay me $1 a year because my salary doesn't matter. I have all the money I need. I'm here because I want to make a contribution,'" Smith says in Zwell's book. "Based on the intangibles, he's making more than everyone else."
Oh, please. He's not making more than everyone else in intangibles; he *already* made more than everyone else in the past in very tangible tangibles, or else he couldn't afford to be an executive on a hobby basis. I doubt that hypothetical executive is living in a yurt on public land, subsisting on nuts and berries.
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