Because everyone is making $300k+ at MAGA and they're offering half, if that.
It's more important to start with an organization that cares about quality in the first place.
China has so many people that EE and CS are a dime a dozen, thats why they have a competitive market thats low cost. People are in a jungle trying to survive.
[0]: https://youtu.be/ljOoGyCso8s?t=101
The video is (Supposedly) EEs doing customer support roles thus allowing Cheap PCB for hobbyists, the equivalent in the US does not exist.
Side Note: I hear this is also why SASS never really took off in China. Why pay someone else for software when you can get a dozen people to make your own cheaper.
How so? All 3 major German Car Groups have invested substantially into software. VW Group set up an entire company with the core goal of allowing different operating practices for software development, which doesn't sound too dissimilar to Woven, at least in its goals.
"Instead of developing software for cars independently, Cariad will act as a coordinator for externally developed technologies – primarily software from Rivian and Xpeng."
By all accounts, rakuten is dealing with absolute horror shows of internal codebases, but they're generally competent at delivering reliable software without a lot of surprises in my experience.
You also have a hard time hiring good mid-levels because you can’t possibly pay them as much as the top people, right? You also have the problem that some of your SWEs might make more than their managers, and that’s just unconscionable.
So what do you do? Have a “secret bonus” program that even most people in HR don’t know about? Hiring becomes tricky: Better make sure you don’t have a live one on the line when the only HR with need-to-know is on vacation.
That even works in the bay area, which is how places like Oxide keep fantastically skilled people despite paying below market rate.
Is it the easiest way to hire? No, but I never said it was.
of course places that value good software engineering and have the cash flow to pay them do so