The Quest Begins (The "Why") I still remember the first time I got a job offer after months of leetcode grinding. The recruiter slid over a PDF with a number that felt… okay, but not great. I was excited to finally have a foot in the door, yet a tiny voice whispered, “You could be leaving money on the table.” I’d heard the horror stories of engineers accepting the first number and regretting it months later when they saw a peer with similar experience pulling in $20k more. That feeling—like ...