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There isn't any manipulation going on there what the parent comment suggests. When a business is cash strapped it does not have the funds to compete with salaries. However, the business can offer other benefits such as what the parent comment says and these are a benefit alternative to the mundane jobs and tasks an enterprise may have. The prospective engineer can absolutely decline the offer. I feel like you miss the point of being cash strapped. You can't just create funds out of thin air at any time. The parent commenter did not even suggest you perpetually exploit the engineer.
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Being in the lower age bracket of OP, I have to agree with OPs point. There is quite a considerable pool of experienced, motivated and not career, and no longer really money motivated, people out there. We can be had by all OP said. I'll add an incomplete, and highly personal, points: 1, give us hard problems to solve with smart people 2, spare us corporate BS, careerists and all that 3, listen to us and give us aithority to decide things 4, don't have us report to some people who's only professional experience is in your young start-up

Good news, we are avaiable on all levels in the hierachy. Less on C-level, or even just VP, but we are there. And to be honest, to get your company of the ground the last thing you want is an accomplished VP from big corp in your industry. Those career politicians are best suited for your board.

> but the characterization of appealing to burned-out engineers, especially older folks,

It's not just "older folks" that are burnt out from being effectively abused by employers for years or decades. I left my last employer after just shy of 16 years as I didn't have a cost of living increase in over a decade, worked over 400 hours of overtime in a calendar year and was constantly being asked for more, with every single thing I did being micromanaged with a time stamp down to the second with it going as far as some managers asking employees to notify them when they'd be AFK to use the toilet to justify a few minute gap in activity, while my CEO gave himself a 40-something million dollar annual raise (while being a multi-billionaire).

In the past year and a half roughly half of that office has quit, heck when I put in my notice one of my team leads had put his in day before and the one I directly reported to put in his the day after I did.

People are tired of being treated like crap, with or without "enough" pay.

Sometimes being trusted, being treated like an adult, and being given some amount of freedom is far more attractive than more money.

It seems like "older folks" in tech is like older folks in the NFL. Around 30. You can get pretty grizzled / salty pretty fast with bad environments.
I don't know. From talking to them, they seem really happy with the deal.

One example - one of the original creators of a mega-popular open source enterprise messaging product, that product is the defacto standard in its space, he created it around 2007-ish with 4 other folks. Today i don't see his name on recent commits but i'd be pretty sure he's still involved on the apache project board or something. He was a lead developer in a big org at that time but then levelled up to MD level over the course of a decade or so.

He builds houses now (not a typo - a moderately famous programmer who now has his own house building company), he teaches elderly folks in his community how to use the internet without falling to scams and he cranks out code for 2 startups on a part time basis.

From the things he engages with today it seems to me that he's not chasing money (he could walk into a mid 6-figure MD level role tomorrow if he relocated back to NYC) but fulfillment.

Another example, one of the most skeptical people i've ever met, i just can't imagine a scenario where someone manipulates him but anyway, he's maybe a year into pairing up with a fintech startup and best i can guess, he's paying them. I.e. i'm pretty sure he's invested money in them and i can't imagine they're providing his previous salary. He relocated so i only see on social media these days but he certainly appears to be having a blast of time and i've never seen him in as high spirits.

If it was manipulation then i'd be expecting to see underhanded tactics but that's not the suggestion here. The suggestion here is to meet demand for more interesting job roles with better flexibility for life and in return get the benefit of a top level developer in your org.