Compare staying, moving or reskilling without letting salary anchors, sunk time or today's mood decide the future.
Open situation →Reasoning Practice · Starter
One salary number defines the career choice
A recruiter names a salary 20% above the current role. The career discussion now revolves around that number, while learning, stability, workload and future options remain vague.
Your decision
What should happen before comparing the offers?
Show the best first move
A. Define the small set of career criteria and evidence for each criterion before weighting the salary difference.
Why this move helps
The first salient number can dominate the frame. Predefined criteria protect the decision from collapsing into one dimension.
Evidence still missing
- Evidence about role scope, manager, workload and learning.
- The relative importance of criteria before the offer.
- Total compensation and downside conditions, not only headline salary.
Evidence note
Anchoring is a plausible risk because one number organizes the decision. Salary can still be the most important criterion when that priority is explicit.
Next action
Create and weight the criteria before scoring either role.
Best first lens
Anchoring Effect
Use the lens to ask a better question. It does not prove that a person or team has a cognitive bias.
Other defensible lenses
The situation may have more than one explanation.
Continue the path
Situation → skill → technique → action.
You can make a decision without pretending uncertainty has disappeared.
Build this skill →Fix the comparison dimensions before a preferred option makes the criteria move.
Run the technique →