I’ve also been recurring for the last 10+ years and can concur with total comp is the #1 factor by far, followed by remote-friendly / remote-first work.
A 3rd factor for me however has always been the tech stack. Engineers I recruit are keenly aware that if they get stuck in a non-modern or too-modern tech stack that it could hurt their future career opportunities.
You can’t just contribute to open source and reach a high level, at least not very quickly very often. They want to jump into a high growth company and contribute to large interesting apps / services that get used in production. Open source is great, but on a resume, it’s nothing like saying you launched an app that handles millions of dollars in transactions, or billions of API requests.
A 3rd factor for me however has always been the tech stack. Engineers I recruit are keenly aware that if they get stuck in a non-modern or too-modern tech stack that it could hurt their future career opportunities.
You can’t just contribute to open source and reach a high level, at least not very quickly very often. They want to jump into a high growth company and contribute to large interesting apps / services that get used in production. Open source is great, but on a resume, it’s nothing like saying you launched an app that handles millions of dollars in transactions, or billions of API requests.