Sure, and some of them count as "compensation" in the broad sense. For example, if the company is willing to give me more paid time off, then that's equivalent to higher pay.

Some of the other factors you mentioned (such as whether it's "green-field") aren't compensation and can't be adjusted to attract candidates.

Pay is relatively easy to adjust, so it's an easy and fairly general answer to the complex problem of recruiting and retaining engineers.

> For most developers earning over $100K as it is, an extra 10% or even 20% isn't going to change where they eat, what car they drive, where they live, their house, their clothes, or even necessarily what kind of vacation(s) they go on every year.

I've seen developers change their choice of an offer based on $15-20k. It may not seem like a lot to you, but it's important for many people, and I totally respect that.

My comment more broadly was not just about pay, but about the attitude that "developer shortage" is going to be solved by sticks (pressuring developers to be more productive, aggressive outsourcing), rather than carrots (better pay, benefits, work environment, etc.)

The industry's fondness of trying to beat down engineer comp with sticks for decades (how many times was the outsourcing boogeyman paraded?) is the reason for the current predicament.

People looked at all the "outsource all the things!!1" articles on "CIO Today" and decided programming ain't for them 10 years ago. That's why we lack senior engineers now.

Solution for the problem? According to the article, it's more sticks!

Who writes these things?!