[runako]

This might be a plausible outcome, except for two factors:

- Big Tech has been expanding out of CA for over a decade (e.g. Amazon HQ2, Microsoft Atlanta HQ, etc.)

- Tech compensation is highly weighted toward equity (RSUs/etc.).

Taken together, these mean that more regions have at least one big tech player that's paying significantly in equity. This means that even if the salary portion of compensation is reduced for employees living outside SF, their overall compensation will likely still be very competitive.

At the same time, regional markets are heating up as non-tech companies increasingly are staffing up with the same React & Swift programmers needed in SF. Why leave family & move to SF for $180k base when you can make $150k base in Atlanta or Raleigh, where the cost of living is a fraction of SF?

(Given recent actions in the public markets, it's also worth nothing that equity-based compensation frequently is topped up to some extent when stock values remain depressed. It's been a number of years since this broadly happened, but we can generally expect the $100B+ club (at least) to issue meaningful retention grants if stocks stay down while the labor market remains tight.)