Why the salary number misleads
Base salary is the loudest number and frequently the least decisive. A $92,000 offer with no match, thin PTO and a $350/month premium share is worth less per year than an $85,000 offer with a 4% match, 20 days off and cheap insurance — before counting a shorter commute. The components people skip: the 401(k) match is literal free money (4% of $85k is $3,400/year — see why the match comes first); health premium shares differ by $2,000-5,000/year between employers for similar coverage, and deductible/out-of-pocket differences can double that gap for families; an expected bonus is real but probabilistic — haircut it by how reliably it pays (ask the recruiter what last year's actual payout percentage was); and PTO is income you're paid while living — eight extra days is 3% of the year.
The true-hourly-rate lens
The second table row that changes decisions: divide each offer's total value by the hours it actually consumes — work hours plus commute, on the days you're not on PTO. A 45-minute-each-way commute is ~360 unpaid hours a year, an entire extra work-month and a half; a remote job's per-hour value routinely beats a 10%-higher in-office salary once those hours enter the denominator (the commute calculator adds the driving dollars on top — fuel, wear and parking are their own $2,000-5,000). Per-hour framing also handles culture honestly: a "$95k" job whose real norm is 50-hour weeks pays 20% less per hour than the sticker suggested. Ask about actual hours in the interview — it's a compensation question wearing a culture costume.
What this calculator deliberately leaves out
- Equity. RSUs can dwarf everything above — and deserve their own math with tenure and volatility haircuts; the RSU guide covers pricing them into an offer.
- Raise trajectory and title. A job paying $3k less but promoting in 18 months wins by year three — every future raise compounds off the new base. Weight this heavily early-career.
- Stability and severance culture. A volatile employer's premium is partly risk compensation; discount accordingly.
- Retirement plan quality beyond the match — a plan with 0.8% target-date funds quietly claws back part of the match's value (fee impact).
- State taxes on a relocation — a $10k raise moving from Texas to California can net negative; run both versions through the take-home calculator.
Using the output to negotiate
The gap this calculator surfaces is your negotiation script. If Offer A wins on total value but you prefer B's work, tell B specifically: "A's package is worth about $4,000 more once the match and premiums are counted — can you close that?" Concrete component math is far harder to wave off than "I was hoping for more." Remember which levers move easiest: base salary is the stickiest; sign-on bonuses, extra PTO, a review-at-6-months clause, and remote days are routinely granted precisely because they're cheaper than base — but as this calculator shows, they're worth real dollars to you. And whichever offer wins, route the raise deliberately: the save-half-of-every-raise rule is easiest to apply on day one of a new job, when the higher income hasn't become normal yet.