I said no to a $786k offer. Here’s why.

Photo by Alessandro De Bellis on Unsplash

Last year I went through a few interviews for the engineering manager position, and was lucky enough to get a few great offers. When I was choosing among these offers, I struggled (in a good spot). I’d like to share my thinking process at that time as it could be a good reference to readers going through similar situations.

To set some context, I had 3 offers that were under consideration.

• Company A: 786k first year, and 672k for future years.
• Company B: 736k first year, and 641k for future years.
• Company C: 708k first year, and 673k for future years.

Based on the numbers, one could say that, Company A is obviously the best, go for it! However, in such situation, there are at least two important steps to carefully think through before landing on a decision.

1. Normalize the offers, a.k.a. making it an apple-to-apple comparison. The biggest variable that is hidden inside each offers is called refreshers. They are company and level specific, and is almost never specified in the offer letter itself. That’s also why it is often ignored, unjustifiably. You can and should always learn how refresher works for your offered position by talking to your recruiter. After this exercise, I knew that on a yearly average I could get a ~20k refresher at company A and…