[pjungwir]

I'm a senior developer (but in web more than mobile). I freelance but often fall into a lead role when I'm part of a team. My thoughts:

1. When I read "competitive salary" or "market rate" in a job description I dismiss it as underpaid. I interpret it as "average salary," and I hope I bring more than average value. To me a competitive salary is one that competes with my freelance income. Tell me the range or I'm moving on.

2. Lots of good programmers are happy as leads but don't aspire to management. If a startup advertised a technical track with the same compensation as the management track, I bet they'd attract a ton of interest. Maybe this is an "architect" role, maybe even CTO (for certain definitions of CTO), but it's pretty rare. My favorite question to ask startups is what they offer career-wise. BigCos have a plan, but I've yet to meet a startup that could answer that question, except a hand-wavy "we're growing". They definitely don't have a tech-track answer.

EDIT: 3. What kind of vacation do you offer? I see 2-3 weeks a lot and it's not interesting. When I read PTO I close the tab. When I read "unlimited vacation" I close the tab. If you can't offer an actually-competitive salary, you could try to compete here.