How we work
Methodology
A brief is only as good as the discipline behind it. Here's how every Footnote brief is compiled, scored, and cited — and the lines we won't cross.
Collect
We pull the public record for the company, role, and metro — filings, wage data, litigation, leadership history.
Verify
Each figure is traced to a named primary source and cross-checked. If we can't stand behind it, it doesn't go in.
Score
Seven weighted signals — from organizational health to role-specific risk — roll up into one 0–100 composite: the wax-seal verdict.
Write
A plain-language verdict and a negotiation play — every claim footnoted to a source you can open yourself.
The score
One number, every signal.
The composite synthesizes the signals that actually move a career decision — organizational health, leadership stability, strategic coherence, alumni outcomes, promotion velocity, skills marketability, and role-specific risk — shown heaviest-first, each weighted into one 0–100 number. We show every component, never just the headline, so you can see why a brief lands where it does. Compensation is judged on its own axis — where your offer sits against the certified market wage band — not folded into this company-quality score.
One score, seven chapters. These seven components are the engine; the brief presents their evidence across seven chapters. Organizational health and strategic coherence anchor Company quality; alumni outcomes and promotion velocity drive the career upside read inside it; leadership stability, skills marketability, and role-specific risk power Role & career risk; the compensation axis stands alone in Offer economics; and the Negotiation playbook turns whatever the evidence supports into asks. Same data, two altitudes — the components say why the score landed; the chapters walk you through the receipts.
Primary sources only
Filings and official datasets — not aggregators, not anonymous reviews, not rumor.
No third-party enrichment
We don't buy scraped people-data. What's in a brief, we can point to.
Uncertainty, marked
When the record is thin or lagging, we say so plainly rather than guess.
Generated fresh, for you
Every brief is built the moment you ask — computed live against that day's ingest, for your exact company, role, and offer. No two are alike; nothing is pulled off a shelf.
It can stay alive
A brief is sealed the day it's built — a point-in-time read. Genevieve, your Footnote concierge, stays read-in to help you work the findings and act on them. Add Company Watch and the record keeps you posted — an alert the day your employer files something that matters.