Why doesn't a great salary rescue the score?

Because compensation carries only 0.3 of the weighting. Maxed out alone it delivers 30 points, so the arithmetic caps how far pay can compensate for the rest — which matches the common experience that a raise fixes dissatisfaction for a few months at most.

Should I change the weights?

If you know your own priorities, yes. The defaults are a reasonable general convention, not a finding about you. Someone with young children may weight work-life balance far above 0.25, and the model would be more useful to them for the change.

Job Satisfaction

Measure job satisfaction factors

Overall Score:70%

Recommendation:High

Perfect pay and nothing else scores 30 out of 100

Compensation is the heaviest single weight in this model at 0.3, and it is still a minority. Rate pay a perfect 10 with growth, culture and work-life balance all at zero and the score is 30. Reverse it — pay at zero, everything else perfect — and the score is 70. The three things nobody puts in a contract outweigh the one thing everybody negotiates.

How it works

Combines compensation, growth, culture and work-life balance into a single score out of 100.
Weights them 0.3, 0.25, 0.2 and 0.25, which sum to exactly 1.
Lets you see which factor is actually dragging a job down rather than which one you talk about most.

score = (compensation × 0.3 + growth × 0.25 + culture × 0.2 + work-life × 0.25) × 10
each input is rated 0–10, so the score runs 0–100

Worked example

Compensation 8, growth 6, culture 7, work-life balance 5.

compensation: 8 × 0.3 = 2.4
growth: 6 × 0.25 = 1.5
culture: 7 × 0.2 = 1.4
work-life: 5 × 0.25 = 1.25
sum = 6.55, and 6.55 × 10 = 65.5

65.5 out of 100. Work-life balance is the weakest input and carries the second-heaviest weight, so it costs more here than the merely average culture score does.

Reading the result

Growth and work-life balance carry 0.25 each — together they are half the score, more than pay and culture combined. If the number surprises you, that pairing is usually why.
Culture is weighted lowest at 0.2 despite being the factor people most often cite when they leave. That is a defensible modelling choice and also the one most worth overriding if your own experience says otherwise.
Every input is a self-rating taken at a moment, and satisfaction moves with recent events. A score taken the week after a bad project and the week after a good one will differ by more than any real change in the job.
A single number invites comparison between two offers, but the components matter more than the total. Two jobs at 65 can be entirely different problems, and the fix for one is not the fix for the other.

Common questions

Why doesn't a great salary rescue the score?: Because compensation carries only 0.3 of the weighting. Maxed out alone it delivers 30 points, so the arithmetic caps how far pay can compensate for the rest — which matches the common experience that a raise fixes dissatisfaction for a few months at most.
Should I change the weights?: If you know your own priorities, yes. The defaults are a reasonable general convention, not a finding about you. Someone with young children may weight work-life balance far above 0.25, and the model would be more useful to them for the change.