Why Engineers Are Ignoring Your Job Posts

06/10/2025

You're Competing With This

The Google Recruiter who sends a message that says: "€140k base + €60k RSUs + €20k bonus. 4-day weeks. Unlimited PTO. Solve interesting ML problems. Stop interviewing - we want you."

The Series B Startup offering: "€120k + 0.5% equity that might be worth €500k in 3 years. Work with the founders. Ship to production daily. We'll sponsor your conference talks."

The Multinational dangling: "€110k. Transfer to Singapore, Austin, or London after 2 years. Work on products used by 2 billion people. Prestige that opens every future door."

Your Job Post Says

"Senior Software Engineer wanted. 5+ years experience. React, Node, AWS, Docker. Competitive salary. Great team. Exciting challenges."

What Actually Makes Senior Engineers in Ireland Stop Scrolling

They Don't Care About Tech Stacks (As Much As You Think)

Your senior engineers already know 6 frameworks. Learning a 7th takes them 2 weeks. They care about:

  • The problem domain: "We're using computer vision to detect early-stage cancer" beats "We're disrupting the HR software space"
  • The autonomy level: "You'll own the architecture decisions" beats "You'll implement features from JIRA tickets"
  • The scale challenge: "100M requests/day, 50ms p99 latency requirements" beats generic "scale" claims
  • The meaningfulness of the work

They've Learned Money Isn't Everything (But It's Still Something)

52% of Irish tech professionals expect a raise in the next 6 months. They're not unreasonable, but they know their market value. If you're offering €85k for a senior role when the market rate is €100-120k, you need to compensate with:

  • Equity that's actually valuable (explain the cap table, the valuation, the exit timeline)
  • Learning opportunities that advance their career (conference budgets, dedicated learning time, mentorship from staff engineers)
  • Flexibility that saves them money (full remote = €5-10k/year in commute costs)

They're Allergic to Bull

Red flags that make them close the tab:

  • "Rockstar/Ninja/Guru" in the job title
  • "Fast-paced environment" (translation: we're disorganised)
  • "Wear many hats" (translation: we can't afford the team we need)
  • 15+ bullet points of required skills
  • No salary range mentioned
  • "Competitive salary" (competitive with what? 2019?)

They Want to Know What Happens When Things Go Wrong

  • What's your on-call rotation?
  • How do you handle production incidents?
  • What's your approach to technical debt?
  • Do you have a QA team or is that also "full-stack"?
  • What happens when the CEO wants a feature that's technically inadvisable?

The Job Post That Gets Responses

Real Example (Anonymised)

"Senior Backend Engineer - HealthTech - Dublin/Remote

The Problem: Irish hospitals waste €50M annually on missed appointments. We're fixing this with ML-powered prediction + SMS automation. 200 hospitals using our platform. Series A funded.

The Role: You'll own the scheduling engine (Elixir/PostgreSQL) that processes 2M appointments/week. You'll work directly with our Head of Engineering (ex-Stripe) and two senior engineers to:

  • Reduce prediction latency from 200ms to <50ms
  • Build the provider API that hospitals will integrate with
  • Mentor our two mid-level engineers

You:

  • 5+ years building high-throughput systems
  • Comfortable with functional programming (or eager to learn)
  • Have opinions about database indexing strategies
  • Can explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders

We Offer:

  • €100-120k (depends on experience)
  • 0.50% equity
  • Remote-first (office in Dublin 2 if you want it)
  • €3k annual learning budget
  • 28 days PTO
  • No on-call for first 3 months

The Reality:

  • We have technical debt (what Series A doesn't?)
  • You'll spend 20% of time in meetings
  • Healthcare compliance is tedious but necessary
  • We don't have a solution for every problem yet - that's why we need you

Apply: [email]. Tell us about a time you optimized something. Skip the cover letter.

First interviews within 3 days. Offer within 2 weeks of first interview."

Why This Works

  • Specific problem statement (seniors want meaningful work)
  • Honest about tradeoffs (builds trust)
  • Clear comp range (respects their time)
  • Realistic expectations (they know no job is perfect)
  • Fast process (they're interviewing at 3 other companies)
  • No buzzword bingo

How TREQS Helps

We work with you to craft job posts that actually work. We A/B test messaging. We tell you when your salary range is off-market. We help you articulate the interesting technical challenges in ways that resonate.

We also have the network to reach engineers at all levels who aren't actively looking but might be open to the right opportunity. The candidates who'd never respond to your LinkedIn post but will take a call when someone they trust vouches for you.

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