[aster0id]

It's a dumb game, sure. But I'd say it arises from opposing incentives, not necessarily from a real desire on the company's part to screw you over.

How important is feeling "not screwed over" at the beginning of an employment important for you? Does it trump a great work environment and interesting things to work on? How sure are you that your subjective feelings during negotiations match how the employer actually is objectively?

It would seem intuitively obvious that there must be correlations between being screwed over in the beginning and then having a bad experience later on during the actual job as well. But I'm personally wary of blindly following intuitions in matters that relate to money.

Being able to just "walk away" from decidedly some of the highest paying jobs in the world (irrespective of the feeling of being low balled) is a privilege too.

Anyway, in my own personal experience, I was screwed over during the offer phase of a previous job, and the job was not great either - terrible wlb and politics, but I did learn a lot and became very efficient at my work. As a bonus I stopped caring about my work outside of being necessary for paying my bills, while still maintaining decently high quality output.

I had the opposite experience with my latest job - the recruiter was professional and empathetic, and I had a great offer experience. The job itself is great as well.

So yeah, maybe there are correlations, but I'm still just one data point and so I'm not keen to generalize yet.