Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How a Career Values Stack Prevents Regretful Decisions
Transcript
- Lucas: So here's a question I've been thinking about — when you're choosing between two career paths, how do you actually decide? Not just the pros and cons list, but the thing that tips the scale when both options have real merit. Luna: It's the gut feel part, right? But gut feel can be unreliable. I've definitely taken a job that felt right in the interview and then regretted it three months in. Lucas: Exactly. And I think the problem is that most of us treat values as this flat list — autonomy, compensation, impact, growth — and we assume they're all equally important. But they aren't. Some matter more than others, and the order changes depending on the season of your life. Luna: So it's not just what you value, but how you rank them. That's a different framework. Lucas: Right. I call it a 'Career Values Stack.' It's a personal hierarchy of your top five professional values, ranked from most to least important. And when you have a clear stack, trade-offs become almost algorithmic — you can see immediately whether a role aligns with what matters most to you. Luna: Algorithmic is a strong word, but I take your point. Can you give me a concrete example? Lucas: Sure. A friend of mine, Sarah — she's a senior marketing director at a mid-sized nonprofit focused on affordable housing. Last year she got headhunted by a fast-growing fintech startup. The offer was a $40,000 salary bump plus equity, which was significant — she'd be earning well over $200,000 total comp. Luna: That's a big jump. Most people would take it. Lucas: Most people would. But Sarah had done a values stack exercise a year earlier. Her number one value was 'mission alignment' — she needed to believe in what the organization did. Number two was 'autonomy' — control over her schedule and creative decisions. Number three was 'compensation,' but it was a distant third. Luna: So the fintech would have checked compensation but failed on mission alignment. Lucas: Exactly. And when she mapped it out, she realized that taking the fintech job would require sacrificing her top value for a lower-ranked one. The stack made it obvious: the $40,000 wasn't worth the misalignment. She stayed at the nonprofit, and she says she's never regretted it. Luna: But what if someone's stack is different? Like, what if compensation is number one? That's valid too. Lucas: Totally valid. The point isn't that any one ranking is correct. It's that you need to be honest with yourself about what your actual hierarchy is, not what you think it should be. A lot of people say 'I value impact' but then consistently choose roles with higher pay and less impact. Their revealed preference is compensation. Luna: So the stack is more about honest self-assessment than aspirational values. That's harder. Lucas: It is. And it requires recalibration. I tell people to revisit their stack every 18 to 24 months, because what matters at 28 is different from what matters at 38 or 48. When I was in my late twenties, my number one was 'skill acquisition' — I wanted to learn fast, even if the role was grueling. Now, at 42, 'work-life balance' has crept into the top three. Luna: I think my stack has shifted a lot too. In my early career, 'career progression' was always at the top. Now I'd probably rank 'team quality' higher — who I work with matters more than the title. Lucas: That's a great example. And that's why the stack is such a useful tool when you're interviewing. Instead of asking generic questions about culture, you can ask specifically about your top values. If autonomy is your number one, you ask: 'How much control do people have over their schedules? Can I choose which projects to work on?' If growth is top, you ask about mentorship and learning budgets. Luna: It turns the interview into a diagnostic. I love that. But what about the trap of stacking for just one value? Like, if someone ranks compensation first and ignores everything else. Lucas: That's a real risk. A single-value stack is fragile. If you optimize only for salary, you might end up in a toxic environment that burns you out. I've seen people take massive pay bumps at startups that imploded six months later. A good stack has at least three values that are genuinely important, so you have a buffer. If you can't name at least three, you're probably not being honest with yourself. Luna: What are the most common values people list? Do you have data on that? Lucas: There's a survey from the career platform iCIMS that asked about this. The top five most-cited values across white-collar professionals were: compensation, work-life balance, job security, growth opportunities, and meaningful work. But the ranking varies hugely by generation and industry. Millennials typically rank meaningful work higher than Gen X, for example. Luna: That makes sense. My dad is a baby boomer, and for him job security was always the anchor. For me, it's almost not on the list — I assume I'll change jobs every few years. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why the stack is personal. You can't copy someone else's. But here's the key insight: once you have your stack, you can use it to evaluate any opportunity in about ten minutes. Take the role, score it from 1 to 5 on each of your top values, and then multiply by the rank weight. The highest weighted score wins. Luna: So if autonomy is my number one, I'd weight that score more heavily than, say, compensation? Lucas: Right. It's a simple decision matrix. And it forces you to be quantitative about something that feels qualitative. I've used this with clients who were paralyzed between two offers, and nine times out of ten the stack clarifies the choice immediately. Luna: That's really practical. I want to try this myself. Let me think about my top five right now. Lucas: Take your time. And remember, it's okay if the list surprises you. The goal isn't to have a noble stack — it's to have an honest one. Luna: You know, I think this episode is a good example of why we do this show. We try to give people frameworks they can actually use. And if this values stack idea helps one person avoid a regretful career move, that's exactly the kind of impact we're aiming for. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's also why we keep the show ad-free — no sponsors pushing any agenda. We just want to share tools that work. And if you find value in what we do, there's a way to support that directly. Luna: Yeah, a few listeners have asked how they can help keep the show going. We're not going to put ads in the middle of a career conversation. But if you want to buy us a coffee — literally — you can do that at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: And that support goes straight into keeping the episodes coming, no strings attached. But no pressure at all — we're grateful you listen either way. Luna: Alright, back to the stack. So let's say I rank my top five. How do I actually build the hierarchy? Just gut feel? Lucas: You can start with gut feel, but I'd recommend a forced-choice exercise. Write down your top eight values, then pair them up and pick which one matters more in each pair. After a dozen comparisons, a clear pattern emerges. There are online tools for this, but a piece of paper works fine. Luna: That sounds like a great homework assignment for our listeners. And once they have their stack, what's the next step? Lucas: Test it against a past decision. Think of a job you took or turned down. Apply your current stack to that situation. If the stack would have led you to a different choice, that's a signal that either your stack has changed or you weren't aligned with your values at the time. Either way, it's useful information. Luna: I'm going to do that with my last job change. I have a feeling the stack would have told me to stay, but I ignored it. Lucas: And that's the real power — not just making better decisions, but understanding why you made the ones you did. The values stack is as much a retrospective tool as it is a forward-looking one. Luna: It's like a compass that also shows you where you've been. I like that.