[davidf560]

Software developers simply do not get offered pay anything close to SV wages pretty much anywhere else in the US (maybe NYC? not sure on that one) - as far as I can tell. It's not really in dispute that SV software wages are significantly higher than elsewhere in the country, is it?

Now, we all know there's many reasons for that, including competition and housing costs. My point is that salaries are so much lower almost anywhere else that FAANG could offer half of what they do in SV and get the best of the best in an area because it would still be a huge premium over local rates. The question becomes: if Facebook could hypothetically switch all its employees to other parts of the US and pay them top dollar relative to the area, would they still be earning $600K profit per employee while spending considerably less on salaries? Prior to C19, FB needed to pay those rates to be able to attract the best to the high COL area in SV because they felt a strong need to have their employees co-located. If FB has proven to themselves that they can have their employees WFH permanently without any significant productivity loss, then naturally they will no longer care about having to attract people to the Bay (and by extension they wouldn't need to offer those kinds of salaries anymore).

But maybe I'm all wrong on this. Who knows.

[ghaff]

My understanding is that Google, say, does not offer half its Mountain View salary in Cambridge though I'm sure there's a difference.

A couple of things are being conflated.

SV housing costs are astronomical so some companies pay inflated salaries to at least somewhat compensate.

Certain large tech companies are willing to outbid essentially everyone else to get the people that (they think) are the best.