How to choose between two strong senior offers when both look good on paper
Two senior offers, both strong. Pay, title, scope, brand: the longer you stare, the less the list tells them apart.
Paper tells you about the offer. It doesn't tell you if the offer fits the rarest thing you do. Whether that skill grows or goes quiet shapes your next two years.
Your report named the conditions it needs. Pick a Superpower and read its How to Nurture and How to Protect; in a System, How to Amplify. Those lines are your scoring card.
Build it.
- Pull three or four conditions from those lines. Make each one a plain row: what your Superpower needs, the people or setup that make it stronger, and the thing that shuts it down.
- Score each offer against each row. Use what you know about the scope, the say you'd have, and who you'd report to:
- Compounds: the job clearly feeds this.
- Flat: no real room either way.
- Dormant: the job starves or blocks it.
| Condition (from your report) | Offer A | Offer B | |---|---|---| | … | | | | … | | | | … | | |
- Read the card. The offer with more Compounds on the rows that matter most is where your skill grows. That can flip a choice the pay had already made.
- Scoring from the outside is still a guess, so test it. For each offer, turn the row you're least sure of into a question. Not "is the culture supportive," but "who owns the hardest calls, and how often do they land on me?"
You leave holding a scored card and two questions, one for each employer.
