Patrick's got a ton of great insight into salary negotiations, and this post is no exception. Everybody (especially engineers) - needs to get comfortable talking about compensation and wages in safe spaces. This shouldn't come from a sense of ego, but from a much more humble and sincere sense of information-sharing.

The people who are hurt the most by keeping compensation info secret are precisely the ones that need the information the most - folks from low income backgrounds, people worried about making more than their parents, etc.

As a practical tip, one thing I encourage everybody who's a client to model their equity grant in a simple excel spreadsheet. You need to know

* your strike price * preferred share price * company valuation * total # shares outstanding

As a rule of thumb you can assume your shares are "diluted" (that is your total % ownership relative to valuation) will decrease anywhere on the order of 15%-40%) after each funding round depending on company's performance. Plotting this beforehand, along with where you believe the company will end up, will give you a great sense of what your equity is worth.

[Source: I founded http://OfferLetter.io - We help engineers and other tech workers get what they're worth. If you're interested in free data, you should join Offer Drive (http://offerletter.io/drive.html to learn if you're paid fairly]