Doug Ross @ Journal

Using a 'Ben Franklin' to Decide

I saw a post on the JOS forum regarding changing jobs after a short period of time. Would a potential 20 to 30% salary increase make it worth jumping ship after only seven months?

You may want to take a more quantitative approach. My Dad taught me long ago how to make a "Ben Franklin" when faced with a critical decision like this one.

A "Ben" is nothing more than a matrix of criteria. Each item is assigned a value from 1-10. And each item is assigned a "weight" or level of importance. You choose the weight... it, too, should be between 1 and 10. Once you've assigned values and weights, multiply the each item by the weight. Then total up the final values.

Here's an example:

--- Factor (1-10) --- X Y Wght X Y Salary + benefits 8 10 8 64 80 Stock + other 2 10 7 14 70 Enjoyment of job 9 10 9 81 90 Long-term stability 10 3 10 100 30 Loyalty factor 10 1 10 100 10 Commute 10 3 6 60 18 Travel requirements 6 9 7 42 63 Prestige 6 10 7 42 70 Networking ability 3 10 6 18 60 Stuck in one role 3 10 4 12 40 Hours 10 5 9 90 45 ---------------------------------------------------- Weighted Totals 623 578 ----------------------------------------------------

You can see, in this case, that the highest paying job didn't total out the highest.

In fact, my Dad also said: throw away all but the top five weighted items and add THOSE up. Because those are your true key metrics.