In a job offer, how should you count a target bonus and employer retirement match toward one total?

## Not all dollars are equally certain An offer's components differ in **certainty** as much as in timing. Base salary is contractual recurring cash. Vesting equity is scheduled, but converts at an unknown future price. A target bonus depends on performance that has not happened. An employer retirement match depends on a decision you have not yet made — your own contribution. Collapsing all four into one number destroys that information, and the person across the table can tell. ## The four certainty tiers | Tier | Component | What it depends on | | --- | --- | --- | | Contractual | Base salary | nothing beyond employment | | Scheduled, price-dependent | Vesting equity | the schedule, and the share price at vest | | Performance-conditional | Target bonus | company and individual multipliers | | Behaviour-conditional | Employer retirement match | your own contribution, and sometimes service | ## How the conditional lines actually behave **Target bonus.** “Target” is the at-plan figure. Actual payouts commonly move with a company multiplier and an individual one, and a first-year payout may be prorated by months worked. Quoting a target as though it were guaranteed is a small dishonesty that costs you credibility for free; quoting it as “at target” costs nothing and is accurate. **Employer retirement match.** Typically expressed as the employer matching your payroll contributions up to a percentage of base. If you contribute nothing, you get nothing, so it is not automatic income. Plans also differ in whether the employer portion is immediately yours or becomes so over a period of service, and any tax treatment varies by jurisdiction — read the plan document rather than assuming a standard shape. ## The worked version Illustrative US-dollar figures for one mid-level backend offer in a major US market, invented for arithmetic practice rather than benchmark data — substitute your own numbers. - Dependable core: base 164,300 plus vesting equity 37,400 at the grant price = **201,700**, of which only the base is truly guaranteed. - At-target bonus, 11% of base: **18,073**, conditional on performance landing at plan. - Employer match, up to 4% of base: **6,572**, conditional on contributing enough to earn it. - One-time sign-on, year 1 only: **27,400**. Stated as one number the package is 253,745 in year 1 and 226,345 in a steady-state year — but stated as tiers, roughly 80% of the steady-state figure rests on the base and the vesting schedule, and the rest rests on conditions. That framing is what lets you talk about the package without overclaiming. ## Saying it to a compensation partner When the invitation comes — “Walk me through the offer” — lead with the structure, not the total: name the guaranteed core, name the conditional lines and their conditions, and give the two year totals. Two sentences do it. The effect is that every number you say afterwards is trusted, because you have already shown you know which of them are assumptions. ## Where candidates go wrong The usual failure is the opposite move: sum everything including the one-time cash, quote the biggest possible figure, and then have to walk it back when someone asks what the bonus actually paid last cycle. The second failure is over-correcting — refusing to name any number at all because parts are uncertain, which reads as evasive rather than rigorous. The stable position is precise: a core you can defend, conditional lines labelled with their conditions, and every figure pre-tax and marked with the year it applies to.