[jacquesm]

> I negotiate for myself and my family.

No, you don't. I get where you are coming from but you are not just negotiating for yourself and your family, others have fractionally negotiated on your behalf in the past and have set expectations that you are going to have to meet or exceed to be able to get hired and the same goes for those that come after you.

You do not operate in some kind of idealized vacuum, you are part of a market, whether you like it or not doesn't really matter. Market transparency benefits you too.

[aantix]

>If you are fighting against location based pay, you should be asking your employer to pay all employees on similar teams worldwide the same

My response to the OP is to the above.

I don't have to advocate for others. I don't even know the others capabilities, so I can't make an honest case for/against them.

I know my skills. I know my value.

[bbarn]

Your value is not dictated by you, but by the market. The above poster pointed that out much more eloquently than I, but it is a fact.

[jacquesm]

You know your value relative to the market. Without the market you would not know your value at all. This is different for sales people where it is much easier to benchmark individual contribution but for tech people the reality is that your individual contribution is not something that is known beforehand so it is you versus a bunch of others and unless you are exceptional (which may well be the case, I have no idea) your position is not rational and even then it does not generalize which is what we are aiming for here.

[aantix]

"The market" can be a very broad range.

Especially when you get into 20+ years of software engineering experience. It's not "you versus a bunch of others" - it's me and maybe one other candidate.

Salary ranges are huge. Exceptions are made all the time.

And when you're a contractor, the deal making is even more flexible (as is my case).