There’s a fine line with this though — the advantage of hiring Americans in the Midwest versus hiring in Europe and Asia needs to be solidified somehow.
Timezones and the whole mess of laws and regulations around paying international employees tend to keep American companies hiring primarily American workers.
1. Many great workers either won't or don't want to live in SV. I've known a bunch of them, over the years. Moving more development to where these folks are brings them in to the fold.
2. The people in SV don't represent and aren't regularly interacting with most of America or the world. They are in a different bubble. The majority is part of the out group to them. Hiring people in distributed places means you hire people who are more likely to interact and relate to the majority. Relating to people that will use technology is useful when building solutions.
If you are hiring from a pool of candidates who, by nature of their skills and relative wealth, lie at the 90th percentile or higher in their communities, does it really make that much of a difference? Yes SV is a bubble, but hiring people living in a similar bubble in Omaha isn't going to move the needle that much IMO.
Several factors still favour Americans - stable, business-friendly laws, crazy high human development index, American work culture, predictable interpersonal experiences.
It’s going to be a rich continent for many generations to come.
I think the Californians are going to be first on the chopping block. They're expensive and what can they do that a bunch of midwesterners can't? I think international teams are a given in both cases.