It’s true that the community, or different parts thereof, has been asking for funding developers. But we are an organization which runs within a budget. Our current state of “glut” of reserves masks that a little, but employment is a many-year affair, both for us in terms of community expectation and reliance, and also for the people who get employed. I’ve been on the executive board of one (and a half) NGOs with a relatively tight budget plus a few employees, and I remember that increasing permanent staffing (as opposed to a limited-term project) is a major decision; and it is never considered or discussed without the “prospective annual budget without” and “prospective annual budget with”. In our case, I remember that our annual income is not dramatically different now than it was, say, last year or a few years back; and - we have hired @jclark and @michaelweghorn recently (focusing on RTL/CTL/CJK and accessibility respectively). Additional hires can only come by reducing other expenditure, and the main “soft” expenditure we have is our budget for contracting work out (so far, via tenders) and funding various projects. So it’s not just the question of whether it’s a good idea to spend money on hiring developers, but whether it’s sufficiently beneficial as to take away the budget we currently use differently.
Some believe, that because we’ve had trouble with tendering and because of the Collabora/Allotropis purchase or merger, we can’t contract work out. That is certainly not the case; but those who believe it to be true see our budget as having a huge “increase reserves” item, which they may want to get rid of, as a foundation is expected to spend its donations, not hoard them. And this is how I see the large slate of developer positions being proposed.