How do I weigh pay against growth and cost of living in a job offer?

You can compare offers, and the hard part is weighing things that do not share a unit: pay against growth, cost of living, equity that may or may not be worth anything. That is genuinely difficult, because you are comparing a sure number against several uncertain futures. The struggle is not indecision; it is the real complexity of the choice. The way to make it manageable is to translate as much as you can onto common ground first. Adjust each salary for the actual cost of living where you would be, so you are comparing real buying power, not headline numbers. Then set the uncertain things, growth and equity, beside that as their own weighed factors rather than pretending they are cash today. Make a simple side-by-side: real adjusted pay, growth potential, equity with an honest guess at its odds, and how the daily life feels. Seeing them laid out together turns a swirling comparison into a decision you can actually reason about. The clarity comes from getting it out of your head and onto one page.