https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_...

That said, I think you may have missed an important one for engineers: respect

In my experience, engineers highly value respect in their current position and a slap in the face from the company can breed lasting resentment or an immediate job search in the current environment.

Respect comes in a few forms:

1) Believing you were actually listened to and your ideas were fairly evaluated, even if in the end the decision didn't go your way. If you're repeatedly getting shot down and don't understand why that feels like the company doesn't value you or your opinion.

2) Compensation: While the absolute number itself to a surprising degree doesn't matter all that much, what effort the company puts in when it can, does. If the company posts record profits, gushes about your performance, you max out your rating and get a 2% bump in pay as a result when at the very least inflation seems to be 6% right now that cognitive dissonance hurts a lot. This is another form of lack of respect that engineers rarely let slide.

3) Clear growth path/investment: If the company respects you and your term goals, you'll see it through an established career plan, at least for the short/medium term (1-3 years). If you're going about the same stuff every day with no room for growth and no one seemingly cares that you want to take on more or you don't see how you could given the pile of work you're stuck under, that's demotivating and shows that the company doesn't really care about you, just about your monotonic cog-like output.

4) Impact and impact recognition: Engineers want to do things that matter. (Already a theme in your article) and often they want that to be known. Not in a cheap artificial pat-on-the-back and flattery way, but in a tangible way. Success should lead to greater responsibility. Failure should lead to introspection and another swing with advisors brought in. Given your successes you should be given opportunity to advise others working on similar problems you've been successful solving. If all you're doing is solving problems in a silo and no one seems to notice or care, it gets demotivating again.

I'm sure there are others but I find that a general theme of respect for the individual is usually very important for engineers.

The completionist in me notices you didn't mention NeuroLink - his wiring of brains to computers. It's not often in the news.

Only thing I can add is that due to the difficulty hiring, you can attract mid-level talent with more money (they're more likely to be underpaid). I'm sure the efficacy of that approach is diminishing as steady-state is reached by people in that experience level.