# Compare job offers beyond the headline salary

Compare job offers by separating guaranteed compensation from uncertain compensation and by recording the conditions of the work. A higher base salary can still come with tradeoffs you care about. Use a worksheet to clarify those tradeoffs; do not let a weighted score pretend to choose your life for you.

## Put the known terms on one basis
Record annual base pay, expected hours, location requirements, paid leave, benefits, start date, and any conditions. Keep bonus targets separate from guaranteed amounts. Equity needs its own questions about the instrument, vesting, exercise terms, liquidity, and what documents are available. A headline equity value is not the same as cash you can spend.

## A fictional comparison
| Term | Offer A | Offer B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Base salary | $90,000 | $96,000 |
| Bonus | Target 10%; not guaranteed | None stated |
| Office requirement | Two days weekly | Five days weekly |
| Commute | Candidate estimate: 30 minutes each way | Candidate estimate: 50 minutes each way |

For forty-eight workweeks, those assumptions imply 96 commuting hours for A and 400 for B. The 304-hour difference follows from the supplied schedule, not a universal valuation of your time. Check actual routes and whether the office requirement can change.

## Ask before scoring unknowns
```text
Organize these written offers into guaranteed pay, uncertain pay, benefits,
work constraints, and missing information.
Do not value equity as cash or assume a bonus will be paid.
Calculate only from explicit assumptions and show the arithmetic.
Draft employer questions for missing terms.
Then help me compare the priorities I supply without recommending a winner.
Offers: [redacted terms]
Priorities: [your criteria]
```

## Use priorities as discussion, not precision
Choose a few criteria and explain what would make each acceptable. A constraint such as “must work remotely three days” may be a gate rather than a factor to average away. Change the weights once to see whether the result flips; a fragile result points to a tradeoff worth discussing.

Confirm important terms in writing with the employer. Ask a qualified adviser about tax, legal, or equity questions that affect your decision. AI is useful for organizing the documents and questions, but it cannot guarantee the future value of compensation or the actual day-to-day role.

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SkillStall · 2026-10-02