[jlarocco]

> But the location isn't irrelevant and that's the entire point that this article blindly misses. The company may not care that their developer is living in Silicon Valley, but there are a lot of companies that do care and will pay high salaries for him/her. Either the company competes and offers a high salary as well, or it just doesn't get to hire developers from Silicon Valley. It's basic supply and demand.

For a company with all remote employees, location is indeed irrelevant. Unless you're claiming there are no developers in the whole rest of the world that would do the job equally well for cheaper, which seems unlikely. Or unless you can back up the claim that developers in certain locations are simply better than ones in other locations, which seems to be what you're implying.

As an anecdotal counter example, I have moved several times in my career, and don't recall it ever affecting my productivity.

> If you're buying a car and it comes with a high power engine that you don't care about, you still have to pay the premium for the engine. You can't pay less because you tell the seller that you won't utilize the extra power. The car has a higher market price because there are people that will pay extra for the high power engine.

I don't see what that example has to do with anything.