[leetcrew]

if you want to attract the best talent and have an in-person culture, you kinda have to place offices in central locations, which inevitably become very expensive.

take NYC for example. office space in manhattan is extremely expensive, but it's also very well connected. people can reasonably commute from four out of the five buroughs, and a bit less reasonably from NJ, the lower hudson valley, etc. pretty much anywhere else in the greater NYC area would be much cheaper to rent office space, but the subway and commuter rail are all designed around the expectation that people need to be moved en masse to/from manhattan. an office in queens would be attractive to people who live in queens, but it would exclude people who want to live in all those other places.

that said, some companies do exactly what you suggest. amazon has a lot of offices in less "desirable" areas. HQ2 is a prominent example. crystal city is far from the most prestigious place to have an office in the DC area, and it's not particularly well connected to most neighborhoods in DC proper. but if you're okay with living in alexandria or arlington, you can have a decent commute and save a bit of money on housing.

there are also a lot of smaller tech companies that set up in random suburban office parks. typically they do this because they are more focused on reliable profits (and lowering costs) than rapid growth. these places can honestly be pretty nice to work at, but you need to really adjust your expectations around comp. you don't hear about these places because they've essentially decided not to be competitive.