How to Evaluate a Job Offer Before Your Deadline

What to read first

With a deadline measured in hours, reading an offer letter start to finish in whatever order the employer wrote it wastes the time you have. Read it in this order instead — each item changes how you read the ones after it.

1. Base pay and how it's paid. Salary or hourly rate, pay frequency, and whether any bonus is guaranteed or discretionary. A signing bonus is taxed as supplemental wages — a flat 22% federal withholding up to $1 million in a year, 37% on the excess (IRS Publication 15 (2026), Circular E, Employer's Tax Guide) — so the number that hits your account is smaller than the number in the letter.
2. At-will and termination language. Most U.S. employment defaults to at-will under state law, meaning either side can end it without cause absent a contract that says otherwise. Montana is the one state that has replaced that default by statute (Mont. Code Ann. §39-2-904, Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act, enacted 1987) — which is itself evidence the default varies by state rather than being a single federal rule. Read what the letter actually says about notice, cause and severance rather than assuming a standard — and treat any question about whether a specific clause overrides that default as one for an attorney, not this guide.
3. Equity and its actual vesting schedule. Not "grant ÷ 4." If the grant includes early-exercisable or restricted stock, an 83(b) election — where it applies — has a strict 30-day window from the transfer date, set by 26 U.S.C. §83(b) (added by Pub. L. 91-172, Dec. 30, 1969), with no extensions. Missing it is not something a later conversation with HR fixes.
4. Benefits effective date, PTO accrual and any clawback window. Employers commonly set benefits eligibility to start later than your first day of work rather than on day one — read the letter for the exact date rather than assuming it; a signing-bonus clawback clause tied to an early-departure window is worth reading in full, not summarized secondhand.

What actually differs between two offers

Headline salary is the easiest number to compare and often the least useful one on its own. The worked example below isolates one reason why: expected hours change what a salary is actually worth per hour worked, even before equity, benefits or commute enter the picture.

Assumptions behind this example: 52 working weeks a year, no unpaid time off counted, base salary only — no bonus, equity, benefits or commute cost included, so the hours effect stays isolated. Offer B's $15,000 higher headline salary comes with five more expected hours a week, which brings its effective hourly rate below Offer A's.

A real offer carries more moving parts than base salary and hours — equity on its actual vesting schedule, a retirement match, and commute cost at 76¢/mile, the IRS standard mileage rate effective 2026-07-01 (IRS Notice 2026-14) — and what's simply unpriced. To run all of that for two real offers at once, use the job offer comparison tool to normalize both offers into a first-year figure, an effective hourly rate and a separate list of what's unpriced or at risk — it computes entirely in your browser and never sends your numbers anywhere.

What cannot be priced

Some of what makes an offer good or bad has no defensible dollar figure, and treating it as though it does is worse than leaving it out. Manager quality, team stability, and how decisions actually get made day to day do not show up in an offer letter at all — they come from questions you ask the people who'll be your colleagues, not from a calculator.

Employer stability is a real signal worth checking — recent layoffs, funding runway for a startup, leadership turnover — but it belongs to the same "flag it, don't price it" category. A company covered by the federal WARN Act's 60-day advance-notice requirement for a qualifying mass layoff, in force since 1989 (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, 29 U.S.C. §2102), still gives you no advance signal about whether your specific offer is at risk — the notice requirement only starts once a qualifying layoff is already decided.

For a structured list of terms worth questioning before you sign, see the guide to job offer red flags.

Assumptions this guide makes

• You have a single written offer to evaluate — not a verbal offer and not a rumor from a recruiter.
• You are a US-based, salaried or hourly candidate evaluating a standard employment offer — not a contractor (1099) engagement, which has different tax and benefits mechanics not covered here.
• The worked example above uses base salary only, at 52 working weeks a year, to isolate the effect of expected hours — it is illustrative, not a computation of either offer's full value.
• Where a term's enforceability is in question, this guide names the question and stops there; it does not tell you what a specific clause in your specific offer legally means.

When this answer changes

• If the offer is from a private company with equity, the exit value of that equity depends on a scenario range, not a single price — see the startup equity calculator for the 0x/1x/3x/10x exit scenarios that apply instead.
• If you're outside the US, at-will defaults, WARN Act coverage and the 83(b) election window above do not apply — employment law is jurisdiction-specific, and none of this guide's citations transfer to a non-US offer.
• If the role is hourly/non-exempt or covered by a union collective bargaining agreement, the CBA or wage-and-hour rules govern pay mechanics ahead of anything in this guide.
• If you have fewer than a few hours left before your deadline, working through this guide in full is the wrong use of the time you have — request more time with the offer deadline extension request generator, or start the 24-Hour Offer Decision Sprint to have the whole offer read line by line.