> When do you think is the best time to bring up
> compensation then?

There are a couple of ways to interpret that question, and they hinge on value and what is "compensation."

Generally, if you are taking a full time job somewhere it will have four things you want to consider, "hours spent working on it", "location(s) where you will be working", "environment in which you will be working", and "monetary remuneration, including bonus opportunities".

Lets walk through them:

1) hours spent -- Some jobs require a lot of your time to do effectively, some can be essentially automated/supervised into a modest time commitment. If you are someone who values doing things outside of work that might be very valuable to you, if you are someone who values what you do at work, it might be a negative.

2) location(s) -- This is where you will be spending your time while working. It could be the middle of a cubicle farm, far away from a window, and it could be in the back seat of new fighter jets working with avionics. Depending on how much energy you get from variety (or how drained you get from moving around) that might be a good thing or a bad thing.

3) environment -- Generally you spend a lot of time at work relative to say "home" so what is available there to make that more comfortable, whether it be nap chairs, a lounge with pinball machines and a pool table, a well stocked library, or a cafe, has an impact on how "hard" it is to work there. Where hard in this context is defined as pushing yourself to do something you would rather not be doing given any choice of your time.

4) and money -- which is, at least for me, somewhat secondary in terms of how much I "like" or "dislike" my job. It is very important to me that I can share economically in delivering something excellent, it is less important how much over my baseline minimum you pay. But there is a baseline.

There is a fifth consideration, which is my own personal path of learning. So for example when I was at Intel and interviewed at Sun Microsystems I had the choice of working in the kernel group (very technical) or being what was essentially a technical marketing engineer. I initially chose the latter because my goal was to be able to start and run companies in the future, and to do that I had to know what marketing really did, the best way to learn that was to embed myself in a group that was known to do good marketing. And about a year and a half later, after learning what I needed to know, I transferred over to the kernel group and worked there which was much more in my comfort zone.

So in any conversation I have about a half dozen variables I'm evaluating in terms of what to do next. Monetary compensation is one of those variables but by no means the most significant. So in my own method I try to get a handle on the other three bits and they help define what level of monetary compensation I would need to stay, it could be quite small.

For example, if Elon called me up and offered me a job at SpaceX for half my current salary, I would still be inclined to take it because its an area I'm fascinated by, I have always wanted to be part of a private space firm (way back in the DC-X and RotaryRocket days) and I would learn a ton of stuff. So the 'monetary' compensation discussion would be biased toward saying 'yes' rather than 'no'.

In contrast I have had folks at trading firms offer to literally double my salary and move me and my family to New York and I've turned them down because I know I wouldn't be happy doing that for any amount of money. So in that regard the money conversation is irrelevant.

Bottom line, all of those factors are considered "compensation" by me, not just money. For mercenaries it is just about the money and nothing else.