The eight factors
1. Total compensation
Not just base — bonus, equity (with realistic discount), benefits with cash value (private health, transport, food card, education budget). For Turkey, total comp difference between two offers can flip when you account for net-of-tax benefits.
2. Your manager
This single factor predicts job satisfaction more than salary or title. A great manager will accelerate your career; a bad one will damage it regardless of company prestige. Talk to your prospective manager twice during the interview process, then ask for one 1:1 with someone who reports to them.
3. Growth trajectory
Where will you be in 24 months at this role? "Same job, more money" is the worst answer. Look for: stretch projects available, internal mobility, learning budget actually used, recent promotions of people who joined at your level.
4. Work content
What will you actually do day-to-day? Read the role's expected output, not the marketing version. Ask: "What did the last person in this role spend their time on?" If the answer is meetings and politics, that's what you'll spend yours on too.
5. Team competence
Being the smartest person in the room is bad for your growth. So is being out of your depth surrounded by people who can't help you up. Aim for "stretch but supportable" — people you can learn from, doing work you can grow into.
6. Commute and flexibility
Two hours of commute per day is 500 hours per year — about three working months. Hybrid/remote flexibility has measurable monetary value: typical estimates are 5–15% of total comp.
7. Company stability and trajectory
Is the company growing, flat, or shrinking? Is the runway healthy? Layoff history? A 20% higher salary at a company that lays off 30% of staff a year later isn't a 20% raise.
8. Culture fit
Hardest to assess from outside, but ask: how do they make decisions, handle disagreements, deal with mistakes? Read recent Glassdoor reviews, but weight individual stories more than aggregate stars.
A weighting method that doesn't lie
Tempted to assign weights and average? Be careful — false precision feels rigorous but isn't. A better approach:
- Score each offer 1–5 on each factor.
- Multiply by your personal weight (1 = nice, 3 = important, 5 = deal-breaker).
- Sum the weighted scores.
- If two offers are within 10% of each other on weighted score, the math isn't the answer — pick based on the factor that has the biggest gap.
Don't average to two decimal places. The variance in your estimates is bigger than that.
The 5-year question
For every offer, ask: "If I stay 5 years here, what does my career look like?" Some offers compound (you build skills, network, reputation that travel). Some offers stall (you become very good at one company's internal tooling that no one else uses). The differential over 5 years usually dwarfs the salary differential at the offer stage.
Common errors
- Anchoring on title. A senior title at a small company isn't worth more than a mid-level role at a top one in most career arcs.
- Equity romance. Discount equity heavily — most startup equity is worth zero, and even successful exits often dilute employees more than expected.
- Ignoring the negative signal. If your prospective manager seems disengaged in interviews, that's a 100% signal that won't get better.
- The "I can always leave" delusion. Switching costs are real. Plan for 2+ years minimum at each role; if you wouldn't stay 2 years, the offer probably doesn't make sense.
Negotiation, briefly
Salary negotiation has high ROI per minute spent — it's often a 5–15% bump for a 30-minute conversation. Negotiate from data: market rates, your other offers, your specific value. Most people undernegotiate; very few overnegotiate to the point of losing the offer. Default to asking once for a reasonable bump and accepting if denied.