Students

How to choose between offers

Two offers is a good problem and a badly-made decision costs years. Salary is the easiest number to compare, and at twenty-two it is rarely the one that matters most.

1. Rank the manager above the company.

   Your day-to-day is mostly one person. A good manager at an unremarkable company will teach you more than a famous logo and someone who has no time for you.

2. Ask what the job is on a Tuesday.

   Not the mission, not the growth story. What will be on your screen at 10am on an ordinary Tuesday? Vague answers here are the single biggest warning sign.

3. Weigh the rate of learning highest.

   In your first three years, what you learn compounds harder than what you earn. A role that puts you next to people better than you is worth real money in salary terms.

4. Look at where the last three people in the role went.

   Ask directly. Promoted internally, left for something better, or just gone? It is the most honest signal available and few people asks for it.

5. Compare the whole number, not the headline.

   Pension, healthcare, bonus reality, commute cost, whether you can live near the office. A larger salary in an expensive city is often a pay cut.

6. Discount every promise about the future.

   Titles, reviews and “we will revisit in six months” are worth what they are worth in writing. Judge the offer in front of you.

7. Test reversibility.

   Which door is easier to walk back through? A two-year specialist role narrows your options; a broad one keeps them open. At the start, optionality is worth paying for.

8. Negotiate once, politely, with a reason.

   One specific ask, grounded in something real, is normal and expected. Declining to ask is the more common mistake, and it compounds across every future salary.

9. Apply the ten-year test.

   Which of these would you regret not taking when you are thirty-two? It cuts through the short-term noise that dominates the decision in the moment.

10. Then decide and stop.

    Past a point, more analysis is anxiety wearing a productive costume. Both options are almost certainly survivable. The cost of a slow decision is real.