Seriously. If you live in the bay area, and there are literally tens of thousands of job openings, better paid, better benefits - why in the world you move over to a decent company? Even if you are older or whatever, they are still looking for a bunch of folks.
If you are in Houston or Colorado, you are stuck with HPE. Especially in Houston, Oil is down so no place to go, no place to hide.
Way more than oil in Houston and even then oil is experiencing new movement and HPE lags and has always lagged the oil patch trends. upward and downward.
The simple answer is they are probably at a vested stage in their lives that starting over may prove to be financially silly unless forced. Also, once you've experienced other places, you might find that HPE has some perks many, many companies do not. There is also the every company has a jerk of a manager or coworker that makes life hell. Many companies don't offer laptops allowing WFH while contractors or repairmen are doing their things. Anyone with kids makes decisions based on schools, etc...
"Everyone here wants to get out of California."
Not really. It's not bad in Roseville/Rocklin/Folsom. Much less tech opportunities than the Bay Area, but not too far away from there. Also. much more affordable housing than the Bay Area.
Because there is a lot of talent in Bay Area and no one at HPE would ever get hired. There's a reason they are at HPE and content doing nothing of value... that's the whole company. Easier to blame Meg and India than look in the mirror.
Working in silicon Valley is extremely competitive, back biting, and the work is back breaking.
Everyone here wants to get out of California.
"Because technical interviews are difficult, especially at the junior/mid level where the interview is based around having to be able to produce a 100% correct and optimized algorithmic solution to some tricky problem."
This, plus ageism. Remember when all it took to get an offer was to demonstrate that you were competent? Now you need to be absolutely stellar, able to walk on water, which makes me think that there is no software engineer shortage at all.
Also, if you do land a job at a newer company, expect to work in a noisy, visually distracting bench seating, sweat shop type of environment. It makes HP's cubicle environment look good by comparison.
Because technical interviews are difficult, especially at the junior/mid level where the interview is based around having to be able to produce a 100% correct and optimized algorithmic solution to some tricky problem. I've been struggling to get through these interviews for months (as a junior developer). This is partially because I feel like I haven't improved my programming skills at all while working at HPE, but mostly because I haven't truly put in the work to clear the interviews.
Simple. Because I'm too lazy and I've saved up.
If I get laid off, I'll get unemployment benefits and this will give me some extra time to rest and leisurely look for my next job. I'll have to deal with COBRA, but I'm sure that's for a short time as there are plenty of opportunities.
Sell your house for millions and retire.