So much this. I'm still hoping for the work-from-home revolution's best possible side effect: the leveling of the political playing field as safe districts get flooded with politically urban expats.
Unless a company limits its hiring to the US, the entire country can be described as “high cost of living” in terms of the incentive I’m describing.
Imagine a company offering a simple 100k geography-agnostic salary for an engineer. They’ll get some junior-to-mid-level candidates applying from lower cost of living places in the US, sure, and they’ll also get a lot of excellent senior applicants from India, Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. If they hire based only on merit, they likely won’t be hiring from the US at all.
Companies can already do this; there are plenty of opportunities for outsourcing - and yet, somehow that "exodus of employment" hasn't yet happened - I get the sense that while going full remote may cause some jobs to get outsourced that weren't before, there won't be a total exodus, as has been repeatedly predicted in the past every time we've moved towards being more remote-capable.
Imagine a company offering a simple 100k geography-agnostic salary for an engineer. They’ll get some junior-to-mid-level candidates applying from lower cost of living places in the US, sure, and they’ll also get a lot of excellent senior applicants from India, Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. If they hire based only on merit, they likely won’t be hiring from the US at all.