You mentioned pay, the pay at these places is terrible. I got an Engineering Manager offer for a company I worked with years and years ago, the top end of their

You mentioned pay, the pay at these places is terrible. I got an Engineering Manager offer for a company I worked with years and years ago, the top end of their budget was $90k. For the manager. Devs (there were five) were making $30-45k. At that level of pay you're simply not going to get good people. Even if you get one or two who are decent engineers, they're not sticking around when most of the team isn't that great. WLB is important but there are plenty of places paying $80-100k for mid-levels in LCOL/MCOL areas where a 40 hour week is the max.