[joezydeco]

Yes, it's possible to apply to multiple companies. The tactic in the OP is to get multiple successful interviews AND offers with a short timeframe of each other. How likely is that in most places?

Let's talk about that last point.

Have you gotten an offer and gone back to your manager and said "give me $x or I'm leaving"?

Anecdotally, how did that turn out?

[sokoloff]

I have gone out and gotten an offer, shared that with my boss, and gotten a substantial raise from it, in that case not just me personally but many of our devs did as the written offer (from JPMorgan in my case) was evidence that we weren’t competitively positioned in the market. I didn’t approach it with your proposed language, of course, but the outcome if nothing changed was obvious to all sides.

I’ve also been the manager on the receiving end of that conversation. In general, we’re paying about what the position is worth to us, so we might make a small adjustment but in general the outcome is a handshake and some well wishes, and another datapoint to put into our “what is the true market for this set of facts and circumstances?”

[lotsofpulp]

No, but the fact that you have the choice of staying with your current income stream means you can walk away from undesirable offers.