The parts of an offer that are not salary
Base is one line of six or seven
Base salary is the number everyone fixates on, and it's usually just one line in an offer that has six or seven. Bonus, equity, sign on, retirement match, the cost of health coverage, and time off all move the real value of an offer, sometimes by a lot, and comparing two offers on base salary alone compares the wrong thing. Even a posting that publishes a number up front is only showing you a hiring band for the base line, not the rest of what eventually lands in an offer. None of this requires financial expertise, just a habit of asking for each piece broken out and doing simple arithmetic instead of eyeballing a single number.
Bonus: target versus guaranteed
Ask specifically whether a bonus is guaranteed or target. A "target bonus of 15 percent" is not the same as a guaranteed payment, it's a number you might hit, might exceed, or might miss depending on company performance, your own performance, or both, and the gap between target and actual payout varies enormously by company and by year. Ask how the last two years' actual payouts compared to target, if the recruiter can share it. A company that's paid out near target consistently is telling you something different from one that's missed it three years running, even if both quote the same target number in an offer.
Equity, briefly, and where to read more
Treat any equity component as its own line, not folded into a combined "total comp" figure that makes an offer look larger than its cash reality. A headline number that blends base, target bonus, and an optimistic equity valuation into one impressive figure is a sales pitch, not a comparison tool. Pull equity apart into its own real terms, vesting schedule, strike price, fully diluted percentage, before folding any number from it back into a comparison with another offer.
Sign on, and what it's really compensating for
A sign on bonus is often compensating for something specific: a bonus you're forfeiting at your current job by leaving before its payout date, unvested equity you're walking away from, or simply a band capped base salary that can't move any further. Ask what it's meant to offset, and if it's a straight cash amount, ask whether it's paid up front or split, and whether there's a clawback if you leave within a certain window, a year is common. A sign on with a clawback attached is a real term worth knowing before you count it as pure upside.
Retirement match and health insurance premiums
A 401k match is close to guaranteed money and worth converting into a real number: "matches 50 percent up to 6 percent of salary" on a $100,000 base is $3,000 a year, not a footnote. Health insurance premiums work the opposite direction and are just as easy to miss: two companies can offer identical base salaries with wildly different employee-paid premiums for the same tier of coverage, and that gap comes straight out of your paycheck every month regardless of what the offer letter's headline number says. Ask for the actual monthly employee cost for the coverage tier you'd use, not just which plans are offered.
Time off: accrued or unlimited
Ask specifically whether time off accrues, with a defined number of days, or is "unlimited." Unlimited policies sound like the better deal on paper, but without an accrual, there's nothing owed to you if you leave, no payout for unused days, which a traditional accrued policy usually provides. Ask what people on the team actually take in a typical year, not what the policy technically allows. The honest answer to that question tells you more about the real benefit than the word "unlimited" does on its own.
Turning an hourly or contract number into a comparable salary
If you're comparing a contract or hourly rate against a salaried offer, annualize the hourly number at 2,080 hours, the standard full time work year, before comparing anything else. A rate of $45 an hour comes to $93,600 a year on paper. That's the starting point only: a contract role at that rate typically carries no employer paid health coverage, no 401k match, and no paid time off, all of which have to be priced in and subtracted before the comparison to a salaried offer is fair. A $93,600 contract rate and a $90,000 salaried offer with a strong match and covered health premiums are not the close call the headline numbers suggest. Once you price in what the contract role is missing, the salaried offer is often worth meaningfully more.
Building one number to compare two offers
Ask each employer to send the offer broken into its parts rather than accepting a single blended figure: "Could you send this with each piece separated out: base, target bonus, equity value and its vesting schedule, sign on terms, and the actual employee cost for health coverage? I want to compare it properly against another number I'm considering." Then build your own simple total: base plus expected bonus, using actual payout history if you have it, not just target, plus retirement match, minus your annual health premium cost, with equity and sign on noted separately since they vest or vary over time rather than landing as steady annual income. That's a number you can actually set next to another offer, which a single headline figure never really was.
Once you know which piece is thin, that's the one worth pushing on. The overall approach to negotiating well applies to any of these individual pieces, not just base salary, and the real gap between two offers is just as often sitting in the health premium or the bonus structure as it is in the number on the first line.
iapplyai.app breaks an offer down into these same pieces automatically and lines them up against what you're comparing it to, so you're working from one real number instead of whichever headline figure sounded biggest.
