Things I care less about compared to fresh graduate -
Free beer in the office. I’d rather have the money.
Free snacks in the office. I’d rather have the money.
Cool, hip, trendy looking office.
Balance balls/exercise balls instead of office chairs.
Dog friendly.
Foosball tables.
Things I care more about compared to fresh graduate -
Time off and PTO.
Having a boss you can communicate with who isn’t always trying to throw more in.
Healthy work balance and spending time at home.
Good health insurance.
Having a good chair.
Things I never knew were that important that I care a lot about now -
Having good tooling, such as good CI tools, good software licenses and a department that doesn’t argue when you ask for that stuff.
Enjoying the project you’re working on and the technical requirements of it.
Flex time. In 2017 I worked for a company that had 9:30 AM stand-ups because they wanted to make sure people were in the office by 9:15 every day. If you pull stunts like that, don’t complain that engineers quit on you. My daily now is at 3:00 PM and that’s perfect.
Having a visual plan for the next year of your career. I talk to my boss every three months and we set performance targets and goals for me. After three months we look back at the goals I set and if I hit them, it validates him giving me a raise/promotion once or twice a year. He has to defend his cap table to his superior and if he shows them that we commit to plans and complete goals, he gets no resistance. Much better than “Yeah he came in on time every day… And finished his project.”