Thats true but not in TS situation I believe. For a fresh grad, not getting lowballed is simple, get multiple offers and herd them to other companies. If you don't have a competing offer, can't do much. Just work 1 year, ask coworkers about pay and continue mugging for interviews for good TS's. If he does this, it's impossible to constantly get lowballed and year 1 tc doesn't matter in comparison. TS being in bigtech already means getting interviews are super easy. Also to add, interview ability != work capability.

TS's example of bigtech lowballing him is too loose for us to really help tbh. 70k tc at Visa is not lowball. 70k tc at Google is lowball. Feeling that he got lowballed being compared to peers at other companies doesn't make sense.