"Market Rate" is a misleading term. It implies there is a specific sticker price for talent. Like a gallon of milk. Leaders often think they can just look up "VP of Engineering" and find a single answer. But in the real world, compensation data isn't a price tag. It is a scatter plot. If you pull the raw data, you will see a massive range for the exact same job title. Why? Because the "market" is a messy mix of bootstrapped startups (paying in equity) and Big Tech giants (pay