If I'm moderately happy in my current company but I would switch for a significant raise that offsets the relative risk, does it make sense to claim that my current salary is the bottom end of the desired range so as to encourage potential employers to start the negotiation from that point? I ask this especially because I find the act of haggling stressful.

You don't tell your new employer your real current salary, you make x what is actually your desires salary - 100 or smth. It's like you want to make only more. So "I make x but I want y". X is false. You could even say that you want to work for x - the fictional current desired salary

I'm seeking a 20% raise in contrast to the 10% that most people seem to consider standard. This is to account for two facts

- My current team consists of very fun people and feels special

- It's apparently impossible to be fired from this project so my life is currently almost completely stress-free

@lorentz that's nice, you're in status quo. Everything is relaxed and stuff, but you're young, you've time to experience more companies like that. So, if you need to take some risk for development sake, maybe do it. Staying somewhere because everything is just fine is for old people.

10% raise would be a shitload amount in my case. 20%, I had that once, but it's a lot. Since you're at bottom, I would just try at current employer if it's only about money

@retoor a guy got mad and said I asked for a 157% raise

he actually said yes in the end

but I ended up leaving anyway

they underpaid me by a lot for many years. also unpaid on call and other bullshit. I literally asked to be put to the average salary of the title (which was the original title i was hired under). I didn't even take into account years of experience, if I had the salary would've doubled the amount I was asking for

and they also bait and switched me to contractor. so if I asked for the contractor rate it would've 4x'ed on top of that lol

and I also made them millions of dollars. so you'd think they would've paid me some of that