It could also be location-dependant. There's apparently a skills shortage in the South Bay and Peninsula, but there's a jobs shortage in the North Bay. Then th

It could also be location-dependant. There's apparently a skills shortage in the South Bay and Peninsula, but there's a jobs shortage in the North Bay. Then there's the fact that recruitments for managers and lead engineers outnumber those for junior-level programmers and testers, and nobody is taking the effort to train junior-level employees up to the skill level that they are looking for. A company could also have obscene contract terms that highly skilled employees with good job prospects will turn away from. Things that I've seen or heard about include non-compete clauses that are broad enough to force you out of the industry for up to three years after leaving the company, NDAs broad enough to prevent you from blogging about your whole industry or even mentioning that you work for the company, surrendering all copyright to everything you have ever developed or would develop independantly of your work at the company (California law allows you to have personal projects regardless of contract terms so long as they're unrelated to your work), and pledging to never sue the company under any circumstances no matter what they do to you (objecting to that one cost me my last job). Word can get around about these things, and the most skilled employees with the most job freedom can afford not to bother applying to certain places.