How do I compare total compensation between two jobs instead of just base salary?

Build one annual ledger per offer and price five things, not one: guaranteed base, variable pay at its actual payout history, the employer retirement match, the employer share of your health premium, and any development budget you would otherwise pay for yourself. Put equity on its own line below the total, labeled as an estimate.

How should I value a bonus that has a target percentage?

Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in each of the last three years, and to whom, then use that history on your ledger rather than the target. If nobody will tell you the payout history, treat that silence as information about how the plan really behaves.

How do I value equity in a job offer?

Carefully, and not alone. Vesting schedules, valuations, and tax treatment vary too much for one formula to be honest across readers. Put the grant on the ledger as its own labeled estimate, take the actual grant documents to a qualified tax professional or financial advisor, and run the decision twice, once with the equity counted and once with it at zero.

Can a lower base salary be the better offer?

Yes. A stronger retirement match, a larger employer share of the health premium, real paid time off, and a development budget can outrun a base salary gap on an annual ledger. SHRM makes the same point to job seekers: people fixate on base pay and undervalue the rest of the package.

What belongs on the ledger that people usually leave off?

A development budget priced at what you would have paid yourself, the employer's share of your health premium for the coverage you would actually elect, and an early review cycle, meaning a written agreement to revisit compensation in six months instead of twelve, tied to specific results.

Negotiation and money

The Total Compensation Guide for Mid-Career Professionals

7 min read, Scored by Negotiation Readiness

Sample scores, not an average of real users.

One offer pays 12,000 more in base. The other has a 6% retirement match against the first one's 3%, covers most of the family health premium instead of a third of it, and includes a real development budget. On paper you already picked. On the ledger, you might have picked wrong.

Base salary is the number people compare because it's the number that's easy to compare. It shows up on one line, arrives on a predictable schedule, and takes ten seconds to evaluate. Everything else takes an hour with a calculator, so most people skip it and hope.

That hour is the highest-paid hour in your job search. What follows is how to run it. For the asking part that comes after the pricing part, the mid-career salary negotiation guide teaches the L.A.T.T.E. system step by step.

The Five Things an Employer Is Actually Offering

WorldatWork, the professional association for compensation and total rewards practitioners, publishes a Total Rewards Model built on five elements: compensation, benefits, well-being, careers, and recognition [1]. It has been a standard reference for professional practice since 2000, and it gets revised as the market moves [1]. The current edition of the WorldatWork handbook covers the same territory in depth for the people who design these packages [2].

Reading an offer through those five elements changes what you see.

Compensation is base pay, variable cash, and long-term incentives.
Benefits are health, dental, vision, disability, life, and the retirement plan.
Well-being covers time off, flexibility, leave policy, and support programs.
Careers covers development budget, tuition support, internal mobility, and what the next role looks like from here.
Recognition covers spot awards and the formal programs that decide who gets noticed.

Two of those five are cash you can count today. Two are cash you're spending anyway. One decides what you'll be worth in three years.

Price the Cash You Can Count

Every number on this ledger is eventually going to hold up a walk-away point, or fail to. So the rule I teach for the market range applies to the whole package: pull it from at least two independent sources, so one outlier doesn't distort your sense of the real band. Anything you can't source twice goes on the ledger as an estimate and gets labeled that way. A floor built on a number nobody will confirm is not a floor.

Base salary. The guaranteed number, and the one that compounds, since every future merit increase and most future offers are calculated from it.

Variable pay. Bonuses and commissions come with a target and a history, and those are different numbers. Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in each of the last three years, and to whom. Then use that history in your ledger, not the target. If nobody will tell you the payout history, that answer is information too.

Retirement match. An employer match is the closest thing to a guaranteed return in the package. A 6% match on a 100,000 salary is 6,000 a year you either take or leave behind, and that is arithmetic illustrating the method rather than a claim about the market. Run it on both offers instead of eyeballing the percentages.

Employer premium share. Ask for the benefits summary and find your monthly cost for the coverage you'd actually elect, family or individual. The difference between two plans can quietly outrun a base salary gap.

Development budget. Certification, conference travel, coaching, tuition. The company invests in the version of you that becomes more valuable, and you keep the skills wherever you go. If you'd pay for it yourself in the other job, it belongs on the ledger at what you'd have paid.

One line most people leave off entirely is an early review cycle: a written agreement to revisit compensation in six months instead of twelve, tied to specific results. That has a value, and it belongs on the page with the rest. It is one of the five levers I teach beyond base salary, and every one of them prices out somewhere on this ledger.

SHRM's HR advice column makes the same point to job seekers: people focus on base salary and underestimate the value of total compensation, and a lower base can be worth taking when the employer covers a large share of health care or provides substantially more paid time off [3].

Measure this gap

Once you can price the package, can you ask for more of it?

Score your negotiation readiness. Answer question 1 here.

Negotiation Readiness, Question 1 of 10: How clear are you about your career goals for the next 2 to 3 years?

Honest answers give you the truest score.

Answer and question 2 opens. A free account shows your score at the end.

The free Negotiation Readiness assessment scores your preparation across 10 questions, so you know where it is thin before your next compensation conversation. Finishing it opens 24 hours of full access to the L.A.T.T.E. Planner.

What Equity Is Really Worth on the Day You Sign

Equity is where offer math goes wrong most often, because the exciting number and the reliable number are far apart.

Grants come in a few forms. Restricted stock units convert to shares as they vest. Options give you the right to buy at a strike price, and they're worth something only above that price. Profit interests and phantom units behave differently again. Whatever the form, four things determine what the grant is worth to you: the vesting schedule, any cliff before the first vest, the strike price where one applies, and whether there's a realistic path to selling. At a public company you can at least see a price. At a private company you're holding a number set by a valuation event, subject to dilution in the next round, with liquidity on a timeline nobody controls.

On the arithmetic, my answer is a decline, and I want it in plain sight rather than in fine print. This page does not publish a formula for annualizing an equity grant. Vesting schedules, valuations, and tax treatment vary too much for one formula to be honest across readers, and a number you can't defend has no business holding up a walk-away point. Put the grant on the ledger as its own line, label it an estimate, and take the actual grant documents to a qualified tax professional or financial advisor for the real math.

Then make the decision twice. Once with the equity counted, once with it at zero. If the offer only wins with the equity counted, you're being paid in optimism.

Career Lab does not provide tax, financial, or investment advice. Equity grants carry tax consequences that vary by instrument, jurisdiction, and timing. Take the actual grant documents to a qualified tax professional or financial advisor before you make a decision based on them.

Put It on One Page

Build the same ledger for each offer, annual, in this order: guaranteed base, variable pay at the payout history rather than the target, employer retirement contribution, employer premium share, development budget, then equity on its own line below the total, labeled as the estimate it is.

Then sit with the two things the ledger can't price. What the role does to your market value in three years, and what the schedule does to your life. The first belongs to the careers element in the model, and it's often worth more than every other line combined. The second is the one people override and regret.

Write both totals down before you feel anything about them, then decide with the ledger in front of you.

FAQ

Questions people ask

How do I compare total compensation between two jobs instead of just base salary?
Build one annual ledger per offer and price five things, not one: guaranteed base, variable pay at its actual payout history, the employer retirement match, the employer share of your health premium, and any development budget you would otherwise pay for yourself. Put equity on its own line below the total, labeled as an estimate.
How should I value a bonus that has a target percentage?
Ask what percentage of target was actually paid in each of the last three years, and to whom, then use that history on your ledger rather than the target. If nobody will tell you the payout history, treat that silence as information about how the plan really behaves.
How do I value equity in a job offer?
Carefully, and not alone. Vesting schedules, valuations, and tax treatment vary too much for one formula to be honest across readers. Put the grant on the ledger as its own labeled estimate, take the actual grant documents to a qualified tax professional or financial advisor, and run the decision twice, once with the equity counted and once with it at zero.
Can a lower base salary be the better offer?
Yes. A stronger retirement match, a larger employer share of the health premium, real paid time off, and a development budget can outrun a base salary gap on an annual ledger. SHRM makes the same point to job seekers: people fixate on base pay and undervalue the rest of the package.
What belongs on the ledger that people usually leave off?
A development budget priced at what you would have paid yourself, the employer's share of your health premium for the coverage you would actually elect, and an early review cycle, meaning a written agreement to revisit compensation in six months instead of twelve, tied to specific results.

Sources

The figures in this guide come from the primary sources below. Where a number could not be traced to its original publisher, it does not appear on this site.

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