[littletimmy]

That's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that the tech sector is one of the most profitable sectors in the US economy that rakes in millions per developer. The salaries are high because they should be: the companies are raking in record profits, why shouldn't the employees see some action?

[peteretep]

If that was true, salaries would be high everywhere. They're high in SF because of competition for workers, and because of the high cost of living.

Here's an open secret: companies willing to allow remote working are able to hire in a -fraction- of the time it takes to hire onsite, and often substantially cheaper.

[frostmatthew]

Unfortunately not many companies are willing to consider that - even Slack[1] isn't interested in remote workers.

[1] https://twitter.com/mrmrs_/status/567832899854065664

[peteretep]

Something that works really well in London, and might work well in big urban areas, is partial WFH. If someone can work at home 50% of the time, they can live 5 hours away and just come in on a Tues morning, leave on Thurs eve, or are willing to put up with a 2 hour commute as they only do it half the time. I managed a mid-sized tech team at a company that did this, and it gave us access to many many candidates who didn't want to live in London, but lived as far away as Edinburgh...

[walshemj]

but for start-ups remote workers are in 99% of the cases much worse than collocated ones - If your a big company and you need some one to do basic CRUD work that can be well defined remote works better.

To many people want to have their cake and eat it

[x0x0]

Not to mention that, now that decent 1 bedrooms in commute friendly areas of the city cost $3500, the first $70k [1] of salary is a straight passthrough to the landlord.

[1] at a 40% tax rate, 3.5k/0.6 * 12 = 70k

[Iftheshoefits]

Why ever is your comment being downvoted? It's the plain truth.

Wages aren't ridiculously high in SV--they're ridiculously low, just like share of equity is.