But you don't, and can't, truly know any those other factors until you've worked some where for N weeks/months/years. Every company, when hiring, tries to put i

But you don't, and can't, truly know any those other factors until you've worked some where for N weeks/months/years. Every company, when hiring, tries to put it's best face forward. How will you know if the VP of Engineering is a borderline raving lunatic who treats his staff like garbage until you've had the opportunity to witness their behavior first hand? How will you know if your manager likes to micromanage their reports, making your day job a living hell, until you actually work underneath of them? How do you know beforehand if there are toxic individuals, that may be your co-workers or others that you need to work closely with, who create negative work and a poor working environment? How will you know beforehand if any of these things will be addressed if they are present? What about places with ridiculous office politics and bureaucracy? For instance, it can take years to find out nepotism runs rampant through different layers or departments in a company. The best you can do is word of mouth and things like GlassDoor. But, word of mouth requires access to people who have worked or currently work at that place, and you have to take those things with a grain of salt, especially coming from former employees. Even if you do have access to these things, it's been my experience that these things only get you approximately close to some truth. It's a very big gamble and, having lived through some of the above scenarios, I completely understand why people optimize this problem for the highest pay.