Stay/Go Matrix

So here's a question almost nobody asks until they're halfway out the door. Should you actually be looking for a new job right now? Not "are you frustrated" — you wouldn't be here if you weren't. I mean should you go? I've spent more than two decades on the hiring side of the desk, and I'll tell you what I see over and over again — two kinds of people. The first one has a terrible Tuesday, a missed promotion, one more pointless meeting, and by midnight they're rage-applying to anything with a quick apply button. And the second one has been slowly drained by the same role for years, but starting over feels so heavy that they just… stay. Sound familiar? Maybe you've been both. Here's the thing. Both of those are emotional decisions, and emotional career decisions are expensive. You can jump into a job that's worse than the one you left, or you can waste years in a seat where your skills are quietly going stale. And I'll let you in on something from my side of the desk — recruiters can smell a rage-applier from a mile away, because desperation leaks into everything you send. So today, before you touch a resume, we're going to make this decision with data. The tool is called the Stay/Go Matrix — eight dimensions, each scored one to ten. Fulfillment, because does the work actually mean anything to you? Growth, because are you learning, and is there a real path to your next level? Compensation — at market rate, or below it? And then culture, your manager, your work-life fit, the company's stability, and whether your skills are ones the market still wants. Eight numbers. And you score your current reality, not the fantasy version where your boss changes and the reorg never comes. Now, add it all up out of eighty. Sixty five or higher means stay and optimize — do not blow up a good thing over one or two fixable problems. Forty five to sixty four, explore carefully and quietly. Twenty five to forty four, plan your exit while you keep performing. And below that, the role is actively costing you, so you move now — strategically, but now. But here's the part most people miss, and I need you to hear it. One catastrophic score beats a good total. If any single dimension sits at a three or below — a toxic manager, a company running out of runway — that's a red flag that overrides everything else, and your exit planning starts today. Let me show you what that looks like. A client of mine was one bad review away from quitting — she'd spent a week rage-applying, and she was about to take a twenty thousand dollar pay cut just to escape. And I said, before you sign anything, score the matrix. So she did, and you know what it showed? Her fulfillment was an eight, her pay was an eight, and her manager was a two. So I asked her, why are you leaving a whole company to escape one person? She got real quiet. Then she took that data, negotiated an internal transfer instead, and the last time we talked she was thriving — same company, better leader, better pay. The matrix saved her from solving the wrong problem. Two more quick tools before your assignment. First, the Sunk Cost Audit — list every reason you're staying, mark each one past or future, and then cross out every "past." Eight years in doesn't count. It's already on your resume, and staying longer can't save it. Second, your AI assistant — feed it your scores and ask it to play devil's advocate, because it will catch the stories you're telling yourself. But it's a mirror, not an oracle. You make the call, and you keep your employer's name out of the chat while you do it. Now the honest part. Some of you are going to run these numbers and the data is going to say stay — and after all that frustration, that can feel like losing. It isn't. Not everyone who's unhappy needs a new job; some people need an internal move, or one hard conversation they've been avoiding. Whether the answer is stay or go, you'll own the decision instead of the decision owning you, and when you do leave based on data, you're not running away from a problem anymore. You're moving toward a goal. So here's your assignment tonight. Score all eight dimensions, run the red-flag check for anything three or below, and then write one short paragraph — based on the data, my move is this, and here's why. That paragraph is the foundation everything else in this course gets built on. Go score your eight.