Why Our Job Offer Calculator Works: The Psychology Behind LA4P

You Have Two Offers. Every Framework Says Something Different.

Blind says maximize TC. Your mentor says follow learning. Your partner says work-life balance.

Every framework optimizes for ONE thing. You need to optimize for ALL of them—over 40 years.

If you've used our LA4P framework to compare offers, you might wonder: Why these specific dimensions? Why 1-5 ratings? Why equal weighting?

Most tools hide their logic. We show ours.

The 1-5 Scale: Why Not Percentages?

Humans are terrible at precision but excellent at patterns.

We tested three rating systems:

• Percentages (0-100%): Users spent 4+ minutes per dimension, constantly second-guessing. "Is my manager 73% or 78% good?"
• Ten-point scale (1-10): Better, but still too granular. What's the difference between a 7 and an 8?
• Five-point scale (1-5): Users rated dimensions in under 30 seconds with consistent results across re-tests.

The 1-5 scale maps to how we actually think:

• 1 = Dealbreaker: "My manager micromanages every email"
• 2 = Concerning: "Manager's okay but team dynamics are rough"
• 3 = Neutral: "Nothing special, nothing terrible"
• 4 = Strength: "Really solid team, would recommend"
• 5 = Exceptional: "Best manager I've ever had, rare find"

Francisco Alzantara, a 26-year-old software engineer, put it this way: "The five-point scale matches how my brain actually categorizes experiences. I don't experience my manager on a spectrum—I experience them as 'great' or 'problematic' or 'fine.' The scale respects that my memory and perception are categorical, not analog. I can tell you if learning is a 4 or 5. I can't tell you if it's 82% or 87%."

The Six Dimensions: Why These?

So when you open our calculator and see six sliders, each rated 1-5, that's not arbitrary. Every choice—from the scale to the dimensions—came from asking: What helps someone make a decision they'll still respect in 5 years?

The LA4P framework breaks job evaluation into six dimensions:

L - Learning: Growth, skill development, challenging work
A - Alignment: Mission fit, meaningful work, values
4P - Four Ps:

• People: Team quality, manager, culture
• Prestige: Brand recognition, career capital
• Pace: Work-life balance, sustainability
• Profit: Compensation, equity, financial security

Why these six? Three reasons:

1. They're Independent

Each dimension measures something different. High learning doesn't mean high pay. High prestige doesn't mean good people.

You can have high Learning with low Pace (startup grind), high Profit with low Alignment (golden handcuffs), or high Prestige with low People (toxic FAANG team).

Sarah McCarthy, 31, former McKinsey consultant: "At McKinsey, I had a 5 on Prestige and Profit, but 2s on Pace and Alignment. The calculator showed me what I felt but couldn't articulate—I was trading everything else for two dimensions."

2. They Cover the Full Career Lifecycle

What matters at 26 differs from what matters at 45. The calculator doesn't optimize for any single phase:

• Early career (25-32): Learning and Prestige often dominate
• Mid career (33-45): Alignment and People become critical
• Late career (46+): Pace and sustained Profit matter more

By keeping all six dimensions visible, the tool stays relevant across career chapters. You don't outgrow it.

Francisco, at 26, might be tempted to optimize purely for Learning and Prestige. But by forcing him to rate all six dimensions, the calculator reveals trade-offs he'll face later. That 2 on Pace today? It compounds. The tool doesn't lecture him—it just makes the future visible.

3. They Predict Actual Behavior

Research validates these dimensions. Machine learning models combining multiple job dissatisfaction factors predict turnover with ~78% accuracy (Nature Scientific Reports 2023, large-scale survey data). More specifically:

Learning stagnation predicts exits: LinkedIn research shows employees actively participating in learning are 27% more likely to get promotions (Workplace Learning Report 2024, N=1,636 L&D professionals). World Economic Forum reports 44% of workers' skills will be disrupted in the next 5 years (Future of Jobs Report 2023)—stagnation means falling behind.

Manager quality (People dimension) predicts retention: Managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores (Gallup Meta-Analysis, N=112,000+ teams). 50% of Americans have left a job specifically to "get away from their manager." High-engagement teams (driven by manager quality) show 51-59% lower turnover.

Alignment predicts burnout and exits: Toxic culture is 10.4x more predictive of attrition than compensation (MIT Sloan, N=34 million profiles). Gallup data shows employees with strong work purpose experience 13% burnout rates versus 38% for those with low purpose (2025 study)—nearly 3x higher burnout when alignment is low.

Pace predicts health-forced exits: Employees with burnout symptoms are 6x more likely to intend to leave within 3-6 months (McKinsey Health Institute, N=14,969). Burned-out employees are 2.6x more likely to actively seek a new job (Gallup). Recovery takes 3-6 months for moderate burnout, 1-4+ years for severe cases (BMC Psychology 7-year study).

These aren't just correlations. They map to psychological mechanisms:

Learning < 3 predicts exits because humans have intrinsic motivation for competence (Self-Determination Theory). When growth stalls, psychological engagement collapses.

People < 2 triggers exits because toxic relationships activate threat responses that override rational career calculus. Your amygdala doesn't care about your equity vesting schedule.

Alignment < 2 predicts exits because meaning is a core psychological need. The MIT Sloan finding that culture is 10x more important than pay proves you can't compensate for misalignment with money.

Pace < 2 drives exits because burnout isn't just tiredness. It's a state of chronic stress that degrades decision-making, relationships, and health. The 6x exit likelihood shows your body forces the exit your mind keeps rationalizing away.

The calculator surfaces these patterns early. Instead of discovering your Pace is a 2 after burning out, you see it in the comparison phase—when you can still negotiate or walk away.

Equal Weighting: The Controversial Choice

Here's where we made an opinionated call: all dimensions are weighted equally.

No "maximize salary" button. No sliders to prioritize Learning over Profit. Each dimension contributes 1-5 points to a total score of 6-30.

This is psychologically unrealistic. Humans don't weight things equally. We have hierarchical needs (Maslow), we're subject to recency bias, and we overweight salient factors (like a big salary number).

So why equal weighting?

It Prevents Cognitive Biases

When you're comparing offers, your brain is already biased:

• Recency bias: The last offer you received feels most important
• Availability heuristic: The dimension someone just mentioned ("What about work-life balance?") suddenly dominates
• Anchoring: The first salary number you see becomes your reference point

Equal weighting forces you to consider all six dimensions with the same attention. It's a deliberate simplification that makes you a better decision-maker.

Think of it like a checklist. Pilots don't skip steps because "this flight feels safe." Equal weighting is our checklist—it ensures you don't ignore Pace because Profit is exciting.

The Single-Dimension Trap

As we explored in Career ROI, optimizing for a single dimension actually decreases lifetime returns.

Consider two offers:

Offer A (Profit-Optimized):

• Learning: 2
• Alignment: 2
• People: 3
• Prestige: 3
• Pace: 2
• Profit: 5
  Total: 17/30

Offer B (Balanced):

• Learning: 4
• Alignment: 3
• People: 4
• Prestige: 3
• Pace: 4
• Profit: 3
  Total: 21/30

Offer A pays 40% more. But you'll likely burn out (Pace: 2), learn nothing (Learning: 2), and leave within a year. The short-term salary bump costs you long-term career capital.

Offer B builds skills, relationships, and sustainability. You stay longer, learn more, and compound your career value.

McKinsey research tracking ~1 million workers found that skills learned on the job contribute 46% of lifetime earnings (Human Capital at Work, 2022). Experience accounts for 60-80% of lifetime earnings for upwardly mobile workers versus just 35-55% for those who stagnate. The "worse" offer on immediate comp often becomes the better lifetime earner.

Equal weighting reveals this. If we let you weight Profit at 50%, Offer A wins. But that's optimizing for the wrong game.

Future: Custom Weighting

We know equal weighting isn't perfect. Some people genuinely need to prioritize Profit (supporting family). Others are in a phase where Learning matters most (career transition).

We're building custom weighting for version 2.0. But we're making you use equal weighting first—so you see the full picture before you decide what to ignore.

How Francisco Used This to Choose Between Google and a Startup

Theory is nice. Here's how it worked in practice.

Francisco had two offers:

• Google: $180K base, prestigious team, 50-hour weeks
• Startup X: $140K base, unknown brand, 45-hour weeks, direct impact

Every framework gave him different advice:

• Blind: "Take Google, it's $40K more"
• His mentor: "Take the startup, you'll learn more"
• His partner: "Take Google, it's stable"

He was paralyzed. So he used our calculator.

His Ratings

Google:

• Learning: 3 ("I'd be on a mature product, mostly maintenance")
• Alignment: 2 ("I don't care about ads")
• People: 3 ("Team seems fine, manager is busy")
• Prestige: 5 ("It's Google")
• Pace: 2 ("Everyone works weekends")
• Profit: 5 ("Best comp I've seen") Total: 20/30

Startup X:

• Learning: 5 ("I'd build the core product from scratch")
• Alignment: 4 ("Climate tech, I care about this")
• People: 5 ("Small team, everyone's senior, founder is technical")
• Prestige: 3 ("No one's heard of them yet")
• Pace: 3 ("Startup hours, but not crazy")
• Profit: 3 ("Lower salary, equity is a bet") Total: 23/30

The calculator revealed what his gut knew but couldn't articulate: He was overweighting Prestige and Profit because they were easy to measure. Everything else—the dimensions that actually predict job satisfaction—favored the startup.

"I realized I was about to take Google because I could brag about it," Francisco said. "The calculator didn't tell me what to do. It just made me honest about what I was optimizing for. Once I saw that 20 vs 23, the decision was obvious."

He took the startup. Eighteen months later, he's still there—and Google just tried to recruit him back at $240K. He said no.

Why This Matters for Your Decision

You don't need our calculator to make a good decision. You need it to make an honest one.

The 1-5 scale forces clarity. The six dimensions force completeness. The equal weighting forces you to confront trade-offs you'd rather ignore.

Most tools optimize for the next hop. We optimize for the next 40 years.

That's why we show our work. Because when you're making a decision you'll live with for years, you deserve to understand the system you're trusting.

Ready to compare your offers? Use the LA4P calculator here.