Let me show you how the person on the other side of the table thinks. Most people never see it, and seeing it changes how you ask for money.
I'm businessman. My arithmetic isn't complicated. If I know that spending a hundred thousand dollars brings back a million, I close my eyes and spend it. That's not generosity. That's the only sane response to a ten to one return.
Now put yourself inside that sentence.
It used to be that you got paid for what you know. So most people walk into a pay conversation carrying a list of what they have. The diploma. The good university. The certifications on the wall. I can code really fast.
Gone. That's done.
Read that list again. Every line on it is a reason for money to go out of the building. Not one line is a reason for money to come in. Nobody buys a cost.
Turn it around. If you can solve a million dollar problem, ten percent of that million is a hundred thousand, and it is easy ask. If you can solve a five million dollar problem, asking for two hundred thousand is easy ask. You've handed them a return and asked for a slice of it.
Your value proposition is creating that margin for the company that wants to hire you.
This is also why the fundamentals are worth more than they look from outside. The person who genuinely understands the systems is the one who can find where the money is leaking. The person who only knows how to prompt can't find it. You can't spot a leak in a system you're unable to picture.
I'm not promising you a number. Nobody can promise you a number, and anybody who does is selling you something. What I can tell you is which sentence gets heard in that room, and it's never the one about what you deserve.
How would you finish this sentence about yourself, out loud, right now? Hiring me makes this company money because.
If you couldn't finish it, that isn't a failing. It's a to-do. You have six months to earn a real ending for that sentence, and that ending is the thing somebody is actually paying for.