> natural sunlight

Is that a US thing? Never ever seen that in Germany, sounds like "free oxygen" too me.

US and many other countries. It's a sad brag that shows just how low the expectations have come down to.

There are regulations for that in Germany.

Seems there is, there must be direct line of sight to the outside world: https://www.komnet.nrw.de/_sitetools/dialog/5278

The more you know.

Wait, as in you can't be stuck in a cubicle farm without a view of a window?

To be fair, when I started in IT, around 2001, it was common for IT to be in the basement or sub-basement. It probably still is at larger companies or government contractors.

I have yet to see that listed in a job ad here. I ignore California openings, though, so maybe it's an SFBA thing.

To be fair, natural sunlight is actually a massive deal to me. I can’t focus without it and I get weirdly claustrophobic in rooms without it. I wouldn’t take a job in an office without windows, even if my salary was doubled.

Yeah I'm not saying it's not important but it's still sad and embarrassing to brag about it at the top of the list of your company benefits.

So the deal is "salary that isn't going up + a bunch of gimmicks".

In fact many of the "benefits" are designed to benefit the company such as social events outside work hours that is basically free team building activity for the company.

Or other gimmicks to trick employees into working longer hours.

Then they wonder why people hop.

Because there's nothing else other than that salary going and someone next door is offering 10-20% more.

Real and tangible benefits takes some guts to offer and they don't have it.

It could be things such as extra paid leave days, highly paid overtime or no overtime culture, shorter work days for usual market pay (say 9 to 4), private offices.

Employees will sure as hell miss a 9 to 4 job a lot more than your snack-packed kitchen and beer on tap.