A few weeks ago I wrote about something I'd been noticing in engineering recruitment: businesses in food manufacturing and fresh produce paying serious money to attract engineers, and good employers losing people because they simply can't match it.

The comments were split. Some said money is everything and anything else is a nice-to-have. Others said a decent manager beats an extra few thousand every time. A few said it depends entirely on where you are in your career.

So, I ran a poll to test it. Four options: salary, manager and culture, hours and work-life balance, progression.

Here's how it landed:

• Salary - 50%

• Hours & work-life balance - 25%

• Progression / career path - 16%

• Manager / culture - 8%

Small sample, so I'm not going to pretend this is market research. But the shape of it matched what I hear on the phone most weeks, and one number in particular is worth sitting with.

Manager and culture came last

Eight percent. One vote.

That's the part I keep coming back to, because it doesn't square with anything I see at the other end of the process. When an engineer calls me about moving on, they rarely open with "I need more money." They open with something like:

"I'm just done with it there."

Then it comes out. The shift manager who doesn't back them up. The breakdown that was their fault six weeks ago and is still their fault now. The promise about the senior role that quietly stopped being mentioned. The feeling of being the only one who actually cares whether the line runs.

Money is often part of it. It's almost never the whole of it, and it's rarely the thing that started it.

Why the gap exists

I don't think anyone answered the poll dishonestly. I think we're measuring two different moments.

Salary is the thing you can compare. It's a number on a page. You can hold two offers side by side and know instantly which one is bigger. Culture and management are invisible at offer stage - you get a forty-minute interview with a manager who is, understandably, on their best behaviour, and a tour of a site where nothing is broken that day.

So, when you're choosing, you weight what you can see. That's not a flaw in your judgement. That's just what information you have.

But you don't experience a job at offer stage. You experience it at 4am on a Sunday when the line's down, you're the only engineer on site, and you need someone to pick up the phone.

That's where the other 50% of the poll lives.

The bit that makes this hard

Here's where I'll push back on my own argument, because I don't want this to read as "don't take the money."

Sometimes the money genuinely is the answer. If you're underpaid against the market, if you've got a mortgage that went up £300 a month, if you've been loyal to a business that has never once rewarded it - take the money. Loyalty doesn't pay for anything. A better culture at a wage that doesn't cover your life is not a better job.

And there are well-run businesses paying well. The two aren't opposites. Some employers pay above market because they've built something that makes money and they'd rather keep good engineers than keep recruiting them.

The problem isn't high salaries. It's high salaries that exist for a reason nobody tells you about at interview.

The questions worth asking

If the extra £8-10k is real and the job is good, you'll find that out quickly. If it's compensation for something, you'll find that out too - but only if you ask.

• How many engineers have left this role in the last two years, and why?

• What does cover actually look like when someone's off?

• Who covers the callouts, how often, and how is that paid?

• What's the split between planned maintenance and firefighting? Be suspicious of anyone who says "mostly planned" without hesitating.

• What happened the last time someone asked to be developed into a senior or team lead role?

You're not being difficult. You're pricing the job properly. A salary is only one column of the sheet.

And if you're hiring

The uncomfortable version of this poll, if you're an employer who can't compete on salary: half the market will filter you out before they ever meet you.

That's the reality. "We have a great culture" on a job ad is worth nothing, because every job ad says it. So, make it specific and make it checkable. Publish the callout rota. Say what the planned-to-reactive split actually is. Name the engineer you promoted last year and what they do now. Let a candidate speak to someone on the shop floor without a manager in the room.

If you genuinely offer something better, prove it in a way that survives comparison with a number. Otherwise, you're asking people to take it on faith against ten grand - and most people won't.

So was I wrong?

My prediction was that salary would win the poll but lose the exit interview. The poll went exactly as I guessed, which is less interesting than it sounds - most people would have guessed the same.

The part I'd genuinely like to test is the second half. Everyone who took the money in the last two years: did it hold up? Would you do it again?

That's the poll I can't run, because the people best placed to answer are the ones who've already moved on.