Those companies that have spent years building reputations as nice places to work, with high salaries, and good perks. It's a bit unreasonable to expect everyone to be tempted by some possibility of equity.
I'd tend to assume that if you want highly skilled engineers at a reasonable price, you probably have to know them personally and sell the idea of building the company together to them.
But I think the main difference from today versus, say, the late 90s, is that the top companies will pay so much more for top talent. The old tradeoff used to be that mainstream companies would pay a little more, but if your startup went public you'd by like 10x ahead. Now though, I've seen cases where even if your startup does have a really strong exit, you're only looking to beat a FAANG salary by a modest amount (an amount that may lead to an extra nice vacation or two, but nothing that is going to qualitatively lead to a different standard of living).
I'd tend to assume that if you want highly skilled engineers at a reasonable price, you probably have to know them personally and sell the idea of building the company together to them.