[yolesaber]

Bluffing about an offer from another company during my first real interview / negotiation. It paid off and I started my professional life at a really good salary level and now each increase (mostly from job hopping) has been actually substantial. Not that I recommend everyone do this, but it basically gave me a ~30k boost starting out so I would say objectively the best decision career-wise.

The other decision is to not work any job that requires on-call support or pager duty. I'm finally at a place where I can leave work at work and focus on things that actually matter to me.

[stuxnet79]

Never tried it, but I figure bluffing is very easy to do. It is not like they will ask for a pay stub for "proof" and if they do ... run ... fast! Only thing that might hurt you is if you throw out some extremely unrealistic figures.