Ranking Job Opportunities

15 May 2026

I was asked, how I was going to evalaute job opportunities. I didn’t think that far yet, I spent some effort a few days ago to determine what my values were since that was important based on my previous experience. I remember that Marissa Mayer, did some comparisons before she decided on joining Google. With help from my friend Claude, we ended up with this rubric.

Role Fit (does the work match your strengths and let you grow?)

• 5 — Core work is in your wheelhouse (LLMs, retrieval, ads ranking, NLP at scale) AND meaningful new technical territory to explore
• 4 — Strong overlap with your background; some genuine learning opportunity
• 3 — Partial overlap; adjacent domain with moderate ramp
• 2 — Mostly adjacent; limited learning upside or purely applying existing skills
• 1 — Domain mismatch or purely maintenance work with no growth angle

Mission & Impact (do you care what they’re building, and does it matter?)

• 5 — Genuinely excited about the problem; work has clear positive impact on real people
• 4 — Interested and engaged; meaningful product with some social value
• 3 — Neutral on the product; not harmful but not inspiring
• 2 — Mild indifference; hard to see who this meaningfully helps
• 1 — Actively uninterested or uncomfortable with the impact of what they build

People & Culture (will you enjoy showing up?)

• 5 — Strong signals of psychological safety, intellectual curiosity, and genuine warmth; people seem like people you’d want to spend time with
• 4 — Positive early signals; responsive, collegial, no red flags
• 3 — Neutral; standard professional environment, unremarkable either way
• 2 — Some friction: dismissive, bureaucratic, or signs of a low-trust culture
• 1 — Clear red flags: toxic signals, chaos, or a culture that would grind you down

Integrity & Truth (does the company operate with honesty?)

• 5 — Known for intellectual honesty: admits mistakes, has clear principles, doesn’t overhype
• 4 — Generally credible; leadership communicates transparently
• 3 — Neutral; no strong signal either way
• 2 — Some spin or hype in how they present themselves; gap between pitch and reality
• 1 — Known for misleading communication, shady practices, or a culture of BS

Company Trajectory

• 5 — Strong PMF, recent funding or profitable, clear growth vector, well-regarded in the space
• 4 — Solid fundamentals, good momentum, some execution risk
• 3 — Interesting space but uncertain PMF or early stage with unproven model
• 2 — Meaningful execution risk, unclear path to scale, or declining relevance
• 1 — Distressed, contracting, or high probability of not existing in 2 years

Comp Ceiling

• 5 — Market-leading cash + meaningful equity upside
• 4 — Competitive cash, solid equity, reasonable upside scenario
• 3 — Market cash but limited equity upside, or high equity at uncertain valuation
• 2 — Below-market for your level, or equity is speculative with little near-term liquidity
• 1 — Significantly below market; would require a major lifestyle adjustment

Location / Logistics

• 5 — SF-based or fully remote; no commute friction
• 4 — Hybrid with reasonable SF anchor days (1–2/week)
• 3 — Hybrid with moderate commute burden (South Bay, 3 days/week)
• 2 — Fully on-site far from SF (e.g. San Carlos daily)
• 1 — Requires relocation

The reasoning: Role Fit is highest because a bad fit means you’ll be miserable or underperform regardless of everything else. Mission & Impact and People & Culture are tied second because your values (kindness, fun, making a difference) are clearly important to you. Trajectory reflects that a sinking ship affects everything. Comp is lower than you might expect at 10% because at your level the floor is already high enough that delta between opportunities is real but not life-changing. Integrity & Truth and Location are lower not because they don’t matter, but because they tend to be binary disqualifiers you handle before scoring rather than differentiators.

Download the scoring spreadsheet