[pm90]

As always, it depends. I do see your point, and no doubt there are companies that don't understand how the market in the Valley really works and are bound to lose money. But there are also companies that get it right. e.g. I used to work at Rackspace, which is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, but they do have a (smaller) office in San Francisco as well. The people I worked with in that office were pretty damn smart (IMO, maybe my expectations are low).

Smart engineers evaluate opportunities based on hard facts rather than "oh cool its a cool startup with ping pong in the office!" etc. I don't know why this image is so common when so many of the smartest people I've worked with have not been swayed by it as much as objectively assessing the cold, hard facts as to: what they would be doing, who would they be working with, what sort of impact can they have, etc.