[htormey]

The Bay Area usually commands a premium because a) quality of talent b) the ability to scale out a team.

Quality of talent means not only intelligence and skill but also people who have spent years working on the specific thing you are building (hardware/firmware, AI, at scale codebases or services).

If you assume that timezone matter and relevant experience working in large orgs is important, the Bay Area premium will continue for the foreseeable future.

Scale means you can hire 100-200 talented IC's within a year that meet the quality of talent criteria and have experience working and getting things done in larger orgs, the ability to do so also commands a premium.

Only a few other places in the USA have this scale, i.e New York and Seattle.

Coinbase the company I work for is fully remote and does salary bands by location. Within the USA, Seattle/New York and the Bay Area all are in the same top tier band. Also, the majority of our USA engineering workforce is still based in these hubs despite being fully remote for nearly 2 years. I don't expect this trend to change any time soon.

[throwaway110535]

More like a) well-funded || revenue-generating firms competing in a limited pool of local talent and b) high salaries have yielded high costs of living, so to hire local, we must pay said premium

[htormey]

Coinbase is fully remote, i.e no local talent pool dependency, with no expectation of coming into the office, can hire from anywhere in the USA and still it mainly hires people in those locations.

It's not the only remote company where I've noticed this happening.