[lee]

I have a similar anecdote in my career as a developer.

At the height of the financial crisis I was just 2 years out of school and working for a small startup. Our first child was just born, and I got fired from my job as they discovered I was trying to bootstrap my side-project. There was no non-compete clauses in my contract but the company used it as an excuse to avoid paying me severance as they laid off a quarter of the staff the following week.

So there I was, anxious that no one would hire a young developer who has a tarnished work experience with a newborn at home.

I was desperate to just find some work. I eventually got two offers with the exact same salary as the job I had gotten fired from. One job sounded more appealing and offered me a chance to learn and grow. The other was for a job to maintain an existing legacy codebase for a struggling company that just went from 100 employees to 10. My wife suggested to just counter-offer with a 50% increase for the unappealing job. If I didn't get it, it was no big loss as I had another in hand. Sure enough, they accepted and the job wasn't actually that bad in the end.

Strangely, when I look back everything turned out in the end for me. I got a 50% pay raise and I also got to spend 3 months at home with my newborn child while unemployed.