What a 30% Raise Actually Tells You

I have never met someone who feels overpaid.

I've sat across from employees who were ready to leave for a bigger number.

Twenty percent more. Thirty percent more. Sometimes fifty.

I've also watched some of them take it — new company, new title, new number — and get laid off a year later. The raise didn't buy them security. It just moved the risk.

So before you say yes to a big number, ask yourself the harder question: how do you decide?

Here's an exercise I ran at a conference. I asked the room: would you rather take 10% more pay, or work for a better leader? Every hand went up for the better leader. Then I raised it to 20%. Same result. We kept climbing, 30%, 40%, and watched the room split, person by person, at a different number for each of them.

Nobody has an infinite price. But almost everyone's number is higher than they think it is, until it's actually on the table. Knowing your number before the offer lands is the whole point. If you don't know it, the number on the offer letter decides for you.

By the time most people talk to me, they've already spent the money in their heads. My job was never to talk them out of leaving. It was to slow the decision down long enough for them to see what they were actually choosing.
So we did the math. Not salary against salary, the whole picture. Write it out, Ben Franklin style: everything the company currently gives you.

Start with the obvious:
• Base pay
• Bonus
• Health insurance
• HSA contributions
• Retirement match
• Paid time off
• Commute
• Taxes

Then keep going, because this is where people miss it:
• Flexibility
• Who you report to
• The team around you
• Development and mentorship
• Mental health support
• Stability
• Meaning

You usually don't know what you've got till it's gone. That's not just an ‘80s power ballad, it's why counteroffers feel so urgent and exit interviews feel so honest. People suddenly remember, in detail, everything that mattered.
What looked enormous at the top of the page sometimes shrank by the bottom. Other times, the gap held. Either way, we were finally looking at the truth instead of reacting to a headline.

But the math is only half the decision.

When a company offers dramatically more than the market, ask why.

Maybe they're healthy, growing, and they know exactly what the role is worth.

Maybe your current company has been underpaying you. Both happen.

But the number can also be telling you something else: the role is hard to fill, turnover is high, expectations are unreasonable, or the company is trying to buy its way out of an operating problem. Sometimes it’s the same problem that gets the new hire laid off twelve months later.

None of that makes it a bad opportunity. It makes it one that deserves more diligence.

• Why is the position open?
• What happened to the last person?
• How long has the company been trying to fill it?
• Are people doing similar work paid similarly?
• What does the company's cash position look like?
• Is the business profitable?
• What will success require in the first six months?

A big number can be a good reason to look. It should never be a reason to stop looking.

This isn't an argument against leaving. Pay matters. People deserve to be paid fairly, and sometimes another company sees your value more clearly than the one you're in.

But leave for the whole opportunity, not the shiniest part of it.

And if you're the leader watching someone walk for 30% more, resist the urge to call them disloyal or greedy. Ask what made that number so powerful.

• Were they already underpaid?
• Had you stopped talking to them about their future?
• Could they see a path forward with you?
• Did they understand their full value? Or did you assume they'd figure it out themselves?

A counteroffer can close the salary gap. It won't automatically close the trust gap.

Here's the test I'd use before accepting any offer, the same one from that conference room:

If both jobs paid the same amount, which one would you choose?

Then do the complete math, financial and otherwise.

If the new job still wins, go with clarity and leave well. If it doesn't, you may not be choosing a better opportunity, you may just be reacting to a bigger number.

Most of us treat an offer as something that happens to us. We react, we counter, we accept or decline. That makes us a subject of the number instead of the author of our own terms.

You're allowed to do the opposite. Decide what you actually want: the pay, the leader, the flexibility, the growth, the life. Then go build or ask for that outcome, instead of waiting for someone else's offer to define it for you.

Before you chase the raise, understand what it's buying, and what it might be asking you to trade.

Have you ever taken (or turned down) a job because the whole equation told a different story than the salary? Reply and tell me. I read every one.

Talk soon,
Anita