You got the offer. The recruiter is waiting on a yes. You're about to sign the most expensive document of the next two years of your life — and you've read it twice, at most, focused entirely on the base salary number.
The base is one line. There are twelve.
Benefits alone are worth $15.33/hr — about 33% of total compensation for the average private-sector worker.¹ Miss the equity vesting cliff, miss the 401(k) match formula, miss the non-compete buried on page 14, and you've left more on the table than any base-salary bump would have recovered. Worse: 66% of people who actually negotiate get what they asked for, but only 30% even ask.² The reason most people don't ask is they don't know what to ask for. This checklist fixes that.
Run all 12 before you sign. Not after. Not "in your first week." Before.
The 12 points, in priority order
1. Base salary, against the market — not against your last job
Most people compare the offer to what they made before. That's how you stay underpaid for a decade. The right comparison is what this role pays in this metro at this level, right now.
This is where AMMO Score lives. Paste the offer, get a 0–100 verdict against 1M+ comp data points across 529 role families and 50 metros, refreshed monthly. LOADED (90+) means you're at the top of the band. EMPTY (under 35) means the recruiter is hoping you don't check.
Action: Get your number. If it's under 75, you have a counter to make.
2. Bonus — target, max, and the actual payout history
The number on the letter says "15% target bonus." What it doesn't say: did anyone in the last three years actually hit 15%? Companies routinely target 15% and pay 8%. Ask flatly: "What was the company-wide bonus payout last year as a percentage of target?" If they dodge, assume 60% of target.
Action: Convert the bonus to a probable dollar number, not the marketing number. That's the figure that goes in your total comp calculation.
3. Equity — units, strike price, vesting schedule, and the cliff
Equity is where companies hide the worst surprises. Four questions:
- How many units? RSUs or options?
- What's the strike price (options only) and current 409A valuation?
- What's the vesting schedule? Standard is 4-year, 25% per year, 1-year cliff. Worse-than-standard: 5-year, back-loaded (10/20/30/40), 18-month cliff.
- What happens at acquisition? Single-trigger, double-trigger, or nothing?
A 4-year vest with a 1-year cliff means if you leave at month 11, you get zero. If the company offers "$200K in equity," that's $50K/year, not $200K — and only if you stay four years and the stock doesn't go to zero.
Action: Divide the equity number by four. That's your annual figure. Treat anything beyond year one as probabilistic.
4. Retirement match — the formula, not the headline
"6% 401(k) match" can mean three different things. Ask:
- Is it dollar-for-dollar or 50¢ on the dollar?
- Is there a vesting schedule on the match (employer side), or are you fully vested immediately?
- Is it match-only or also profit-sharing/non-elective contribution?
72% of private industry workers have access to retirement benefits as of March 2025.³ Access doesn't mean the formula is good. A "6% match at 50¢" is really a 3% match. A "6% match dollar-for-dollar with immediate vesting" is double that.
Action: Multiply your base by the effective match rate. That's free money. If the offer is $120K base with a real 6% match, that's $7,200/year you'd lose by not contributing.
5. Health insurance — premiums, deductible, and the family math
Two offers, same base. Offer A: $0 employee premium, $500 deductible. Offer B: $400/month employee premium, $4,000 deductible. The gap is $9,300/year if you hit the deductible. That's a real salary difference the offer letter never shows.
Ask for the Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) before you sign. It's a legally required document. They have it.
Action: Calculate your annual out-of-pocket: premium × 12 + expected deductible spend. Add it to your total comp delta between offers.
6. PTO and sick leave — the policy and the culture
"Unlimited PTO" is the most expensive benefit phrase in tech. In practice, unlimited-PTO companies see employees take fewer days than companies with accrual-based policies, because nobody knows what's acceptable.
Ask: "How many days did your team take last year, on average?" If the answer is "we don't track" or "it varies," assume 12 days. If the policy is accrual-based, the number on paper is the number you'll take.
Action: Convert PTO to dollars. (Base ÷ 260 working days) × days. Three extra days of real PTO on a $150K base is worth $1,730/year.
7. Remote, hybrid, or in-office — and is it in writing?
The offer letter says "hybrid." The recruiter says "two days a week, flexible." The hiring manager says "we expect you in four days." Six months later, the CEO sends a return-to-office mandate.
Get the policy in writing in the offer letter or the addendum. "Employee may work remotely up to X days per week" is enforceable. "Hybrid" is not.
If commute is part of the equation: a one-hour-each-way commute four days a week is 40 hours/month of unpaid labor plus gas, transit, or parking. On a $150K base, that's roughly $11,500/year in opportunity cost.
Action: Price the commute. If it's bad, the offer needs to compensate for it.
8. Title and level — the words that follow you forever
Title compression is real. A "Senior" title at Company A might be three levels below a "Senior" at Company B. When you go to your next job, recruiters will calibrate off your last title.
Ask: "What's the leveling framework? Where does this title sit?" If they show you a ladder (P1–P6, M3–M6, or similar), good. If they say "we don't really do levels," your next job search will be harder.
Action: Push for the highest title the band allows. It costs them nothing. It's worth real money to you in 18 months.
9. The manager — and what happens if they leave
Pew's 2024 data shows only 30% of U.S. workers are highly satisfied with their pay.⁴ The number who are highly satisfied with their manager is similar. You are interviewing the manager as much as they're interviewing you.
Ask the manager directly: "What's your management style? How often do we meet 1:1? How do you handle disagreement?" Ask their reports (if you can): "What's the worst part of working for [name]?" If nobody will let you talk to a report, that's the signal.
Reality check: 30% of new hires lose their manager within the first year via reorg, departure, or promotion. Ask: "If you were promoted or left in six months, who would I report to?"
Action: This isn't a dollar number, but it's the variable most correlated with whether you stay long enough to vest anything.
10. The company — runway, layoffs, and the actual state of the business
The recruiter will tell you the company is "growing fast." The data will tell you something else. Public filings, layoff announcements, hiring freezes, executive departures — these are all in the open if you know where to look.
Funding stage, hiring temperature, layoff signals, recent news. SEC EDGAR. WARN Act filings. TechCrunch, GitHub, YC. The signals are all in the open if you know where to look — and you need to look before you sign, because a strong offer at a company that's about to cut is not a strong offer.
Action: Read the brief before you sign. A LOADED offer at a company about to file Chapter 11 is not a LOADED offer.
11. The clauses — non-compete, non-solicit, IP assignment, arbitration
Page 14. The small print. Where companies hide the parts they hope you don't read.
- Non-compete: Some states (CA, CO, MN, WA above an income threshold) don't enforce these. Many do. A 12-month non-compete in a narrow industry can effectively unemploy you.
- Non-solicit: Can you recruit former coworkers? Can you take a customer to your next job?
- IP assignment: Does the company own things you build on weekends? Most templates say yes. Some say "anything related to the company's business," which is narrower.
- Mandatory arbitration: Waives your right to sue. Standard now. Worth knowing.
Action: Read these clauses. Strike or modify what you can. "I'd like to remove the non-compete or narrow it to 6 months" is a reasonable ask. Many companies will agree because they assume you'll never ask.
12. The counter — what to ask for, and how
You've run the first 11. You have a list of gaps: base 8% under market, 18-month vesting cliff, non-compete too broad. Now you counter.
The counter isn't a number. It's a structured ask anchored to data: market comp, the company's hiring temperature, your alternatives. This is exactly what War Room builds — three questions in, a negotiation script out, including a counter-objection bank and a read on the counterparty.
Action: Don't wing the call. Walk in with the script.
The counter-view: when "always negotiate" is wrong
A 2025 Resume Genius survey found 72% of employees said negotiating a pay rise got harder than the prior year, and 55% accepted initial offers without pushback.⁵ The market is tighter. Recruiters have more candidates. Companies are slower to flex.
The honest part: if your AMMO Score comes back at 85+ and the company is in a hiring freeze you can verify, the counter might be small or symbolic — better title, more PTO, an earlier review cycle. Not every offer should be pushed to the wall.
What's still true: 66% of people who ask get something. You just have to know what to ask for. The checklist above is the asking.
What this looks like in practice
Two offers, both $150K base, "same job":
Offer A: $150K base, 15% target bonus (8% actual last year), $40K equity over 4 years with 1-year cliff, $0 premium health, 6% 401(k) match dollar-for-dollar, 4 weeks PTO, fully remote in writing, no non-compete.
Offer B: $150K base, 20% target bonus (paid 5% last year), $80K equity over 4 years with 18-month cliff and 5-year back-loaded vest, $400/month premium health, 3% 401(k) match at 50¢, unlimited PTO (team takes ~10 days), hybrid 3 days, 12-month non-compete.
Same headline. Offer A is worth roughly $18,000–$24,000 more per year, and the equity is more likely to actually vest. Without the checklist, you couldn't see it.
Run the loadout
Before the call, you need five things: a market comp number, an offer grade, a company brief, a negotiation script, and a record of your wins to back up the ask. AMMO has all of them.
The recruiter wants an answer by Friday. Don't sign before you've checked the other eleven lines.
Come to the table loaded.
¹ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — December 2025, released March 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf ² Pew Research Center, "How Today's Workers Feel About Their Job Prospects and the State of the U.S. Economy", April 2023, n=5,775. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/how-todays-workers-feel-about-their-job-prospects-and-the-state-of-the-u-s-economy/ ³ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.nr0.htm ⁴ Pew Research Center, Americans' Job Satisfaction in 2024, December 2024, n=5,273. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/12/10/job-satisfaction/ ⁵ Procurement Tactics, Negotiation Statistics 2025 (citing Resume Genius 2025 Salary Negotiation & Expectations Survey). https://procurementtactics.com/negotiation-statistics/