Is a 20% Raise Worth Changing Jobs?

The baseline: the raise by itself

Start with $100,000 current expected total compensation and $120,000 in the new job—an exact 20% increase. In both jobs, salary equals total compensation because expected bonus is $0. Work hours are 40, commute and office days are 0, PTO is 15 days, Stress and Happiness are 5/10, all three Career Growth inputs are 5/10, and Benefits is 5/10. Work Setup labels are identical. Priorities are 5/5/5/5/5, which normalize to 20% each.

The label is not saying that a 20% increase is trivial. It says that, when Money receives one-fifth of the total decision weight and every other scored difference is zero, its contribution stops just below the +0.10 boundary.

Six controlled comparisons

Each row begins with the baseline above. Only the change named in the Scenario column is added. Category scores are shown before priority weighting; final scores use equal 20% weights.

Scenario C reaches “Leans toward staying” because the ten-hour burden produces the Time floor of −1.00. Scenario D shows a different offset: stress moving 5→7 and happiness 5→3 each produce −0.40 sub-scores, so Quality is −0.40 and exactly cancels Money before weighting. Scenario E reverses the pattern: Learning, Advancement, and Future Opportunities each move 5→8, producing Growth +0.60.

In F, losing 10 PTO days means 80 fewer annual hours off. Spread over 52 weeks, that adds 1.538 effective hours/week, producing Time −0.154. PTO affects Free Time—not Benefits or Quality.

The same offer under three priority profiles

Now hold Scenario B fixed: +20% compensation and five additional work hours, with every other input equal. Only priorities change.

This is intended behavior, not inconsistency. The job comparison stays fixed; the profiles answer different value judgments about the same Money +0.40 and Time −0.50 trade-off.

What the sensitivity engine finds

For balanced Scenario B, the final score is −0.020. Changing one new-job input at a time, the implemented search finds that annual salary would need to move from $120,000 to about $150,000 (expected bonus unchanged) to reach +0.100, “Leans toward switching.” Alternatively, new-job work hours would need to move from 45 to about 39 per week to reach that same band. In the other direction, about 49 work hours would produce −0.100, “Leans toward staying.”

These are boundary tests, not instructions or forecasts. The engine searches fixed valid increments, keeps priorities and every other input constant, and does not claim that any threshold is negotiable.

What “worth it” really requires

A 20% raise has a clear Model V2 effect: Money +0.40 until other compensation details change it. Whether the final recommendation is strong, weak, or negative depends on the explicit consequences and on your relative priorities. Before using these examples, replace every controlled assumption with what you realistically expect—including bonus rather than its maximum.

For the formula details, see How It Works. To isolate commute rather than salary, use the commute scenario guide.