I was looking for this comment. The OP and the current top comment seem to think that many engineers wouldn't jump for 10-20K increases. While that is true if they are in a good role, many salary increases from jumping are high double digits right now.
Compensation, WLB, and benefits matter FAR FAR more for the majority of people than "good projects" or "smart colleagues". If you want those and can't get it in your job, well that's what open source work is for.
One other thing - in evaluating a new role, the thing I can be SURE of...is comp. Everything else is a nicety, but I can't rely on it.
So if I'm looking to jump...well, either my current environment isn't great, or the salary is enough to attract me. There is no situation where my current environment is good, and you offer me a salary comparable to what I'm making, and I would make the jump, because you are a -complete unknown-.
So you can talk to me about the brilliance of my colleagues, the amazing projects, the great work/life balance, the autonomy to work on what matters in the most efficient way possible...and all of that might be true. Or it might not be. I've been lied to by hiring managers in the past, both intentionally and unintentionally. But ultimately the only thing I can truly rely on, that is protected by law, is compensation.
> But ultimately the only thing I can truly rely on, that is protected by law, is compensation.
In some countries, the working time is also protected by law, hence your hourly wage as well, which makes it easier to compare offers. Too many people focus on the TC without realizing that working 2x the time for 1.5x the pay is often not worth it.
Those are very very good for retaining people you already have though, so while not super important for hiring they are important for keeping the folks you hired (after all, what is the point if you keep losing people you hire).
> If you want those and can't get it in your job, well that's what open source work is for.
Not necessarily. If your area of interest aligns with your work then even open source work is more productive if you have a use case for it. For example - say my interest is distributed systems, then technically my work will have more impact if it is being used on large clusters with large number of concurrent systems. Open source does not happen in vacuum.
Compensation, WLB, and benefits matter FAR FAR more for the majority of people than "good projects" or "smart colleagues". If you want those and can't get it in your job, well that's what open source work is for.