Total compensation
Also called TC, total comp, total rewards.
Everything an offer is worth in a year — base salary plus bonus, equity, and benefits — rather than the headline salary alone.
Comparing offers on base salary is how people take the worse one. A package with a lower base and a meaningful bonus, employer pension contribution, and equity can be worth substantially more, and the reverse is equally common. The only fair comparison is annualized and complete.
Equity is where the estimates get soft. Public-company stock has a price; private-company equity has a strike price, a vesting schedule, a cliff, and a valuation that may or may not survive the next round. Treat the headline number as a possibility rather than as pay, and ask what percentage of the company it represents, not just the dollar figure.
Benefits are the part people cost at zero and shouldn't. Health coverage, pension matching, paid leave, and parental leave differ enough between two offers in the same city to swing the comparison by a real fraction of base — and unlike equity, they're certain.
Salary range
The published minimum and maximum for a role — increasingly required by law, and usually wider than the band the employer will actually use.
Compensation band
The internal minimum-to-maximum salary an employer has approved for a given level and location, from which every offer at that level is drawn.
Offer letter
The written document stating the terms of employment — and the only version of the offer that binds anyone.
Vesting and the cliff
The schedule on which granted equity actually becomes yours — commonly four years, with nothing vesting until a one-year cliff is passed.