So many people have this ‘grass is greener’, distorted view of what a new job may pay.  If there’s one piece of advice that holds true across almost all situations, it’s lower your expectations.

I read somewhere that the average increase for someone changing jobs was 7%.  That was pre-economic melt down and feels about right.  Last year, there were a number of people who took pay cuts in order to stay employed.

A lot happened in the last couple of years including scaling back or eliminating 401K contributions, a perk that has been slow to ‘come back’.  Bonuses were not paying out and enormous cost pressures forced off shoring of talent in engineering as well as other fields.  Stock options and RSUs where eliminated in many companies and reduced in others.

Generally there’s a linkage between stock and cash–the more cash, the less stock and vice versa.  Healthcare plans vary a great deal as do other perks like bonus payouts (the key question on that one is not how much but how frequently did it pay out).

It pays to be as objective as you can when you evaluate compensation and look at the total package.