1. Where are you&#x2F;they? I got a ton of recruiter spam when I lived in SF and a fair amount now that I live in Austin (the majority of which are companies that want me to relocate back to SF). I received 0 when I lived in El Paso, TX (where I&#x27;m from). If you&#x27;re in an area that doesn&#x27;t have a hot tech market, you&#x27;re likely going to have a harder time finding a tech job.<p>2. What technologies do they specialize in? I see lots of job posts for Rails and React and relatively few for COBOL. I see a lot of jobs for Java, but a higher percentage of those are of the lower paying variety. This is likely location dependent and is a bit of a catch-22.<p>3. Are they any good, but perhaps more importantly, are they able to demonstrate that they&#x27;re any good in an interview setting? There are a fair number of truly bad programmers out there. There&#x27;s also a fair number of programmers who may be good but are unable to demonstrate that in an interview. Interviewing is hard to get right -- everyone has their own take on it, and it&#x27;s rarely backed up back actual data.<p>The people you see getting tons of offers probably have the right combination of location, resume, and interview ability. If I had to pick the single most important factor in getting a lot of offers, it&#x27;s location. If you are in an area with limited tech jobs, the number of offers you can get is obviously going to be limited as well.