Anecdotally, my personal network and I have found the reluctance to direct hire into senior dev jobs the same across the country in RTP, NC. I'm not sure it is

Anecdotally, my personal network and I have found the reluctance to direct hire into senior dev jobs the same across the country in RTP, NC. I'm not sure it is really related to proprietary tech here, but rather reflects uneasiness in hiring orgs to trust their hiring process to actually identify senior-level/capable devs. Hiring groups are just much happier to hire at lower levels and promote up to retain better devs.