They may not be getting paid that much because they can answer your "stumpers." You might be better served by using the interview to find out why they add so much value instead of trying to prove that you're superior in some way.
uh, well, my stumpers include, "why should we pay you 200 grand?" which should naturally flow into a conversation into the amount of value this particular engineer or executive will bring to my organization.
here's another one: "how will you pay for yourself in 6 months?"
i'm no longer technically competent enough to stump an extremely talented engineer on a technical question. not really sure where you get the 'superiority' language, since i would be out of business if i didn't hire employees who were 'superior' to me.
again - sometimes i feel like i'm taking crazy pills around here.
There's a lot of context that made me assume you were talking about stumping them on technical questions. This is Hacker News and the topic of how to do technical interviews is a frequent focus.
yeah. when i hire sales guys, or product guys, they just tell me how much money they generated (or their products or teams generated) at previous companies. it doesn't always have to be a $ figure. sometimes it's, "my work at previous company X was used by Huge Company A, Huge Company B, Internal Division C, etc. here are my references."
these are just nuts-and-bolts dollars-and-cents conversations people have when hiring non-engineering professionals or executives.
you can talk about all of the above without actually stating how much money you made. it's moot. it's irrelevant. what matters is what they accomplished, if they are enthusiastic about doing the same for our startup, and how much money/compensation they need to feel good about it. i am trying to make people feel good about working for me! the first step is to have an honest conversation about everyone's needs (maybe requirements is a better word).
