~250 Candidates? Sure mate, I'd be surprised if at the end of your application process 5 of them remain and are still available.

Companies are having a very hard time finding software engineers. For the first time in the history of the market, employee retention budgets are skyrocketing because recruiting is so expensive and hard. It's not rare to hear software engineers getting a sudden 30% raise out of the blue.

Because they know we're in high demand, and they know that if we switch jobs we'll get a 30% raise, at a minimum.