I&#x27;ll respond to a few points here:<p>1. I&#x27;ve never had a problem getting the salary that I wanted and have had a steadily increasing market-rate developer salary at each job.<p>2. I&#x27;ve only ever managed to actually work for free once, the other times they insisted on paying a base hourly, intern wage.<p>3. If you go in thinking this is where you want to work, but are wrong because it&#x27;s &quot;impossible to understand the company and how it operates from outside,&quot; it&#x27;s <i>much</i> less of a hassle to leave during a trial period.<p>Finally I think there is a lot of posturing around negotiating positions and &quot;strength.&quot; That&#x27;s bs. If you&#x27;re looking to get the highest salary you can, fine, but if you&#x27;re looking for a job that you love I can only relate that this technique has worked again and again for me and no theoretical critiques of negotiating strategy can change that.