> I've been on the hiring side as a manager in a number of companies, and I've NEVER seen a situation where a candidate was so uniquely awesome that the company was willing to make an offer drastically larger than their normal range for that role. A bit more? Sure. Some more stock or something? Often. But not, say, 50% more salary than anyone else at that level is getting.
Fyi, at $DayJob we have one guy at my level who makes 50% more than anyone else at the level he is at.
So it does happen but its unusual. [e.g. Developer A-Z get $60-80k, Developer Unicorn gets $120k]