> It was interesting to hear Yelp call out high developer salaries on their last earnings call. Companies are starting to invest in satellite offices and this will have long term consequences.
That's the thing... Technical people are still cheap. Really cheap, compared to the jobs where your asset is "knowing people" - our salaries haven't been increasing with the cost of living around here, unlike the real-estate agent example below.
Look at what you pay a body shop for developer time. A lot of that goes to the body shop; the people who's main asset is the "relationship" with management.
Heck, at 3%, become a real-estate agent. sell three or four houses around here a year, and you'll make more than your average developer or sysadmin.
Yeah, wake me up when we make more than recruiters. Until then, I'm going to ignore all this noise about technical people being expensive, because it's obvious bullshit.
All that said, while I don't think the cost of us is a problem for companies, the high cost of living is a problem for us. As a technical person, the bay area only really makes sense if you are the best of the best (or have those "relationship contacts" and can get real money) - for the rest of us, it mostly only makes sense if you have a deep emotional connection to the place and/or have a rent-controlled space. (In the south bay, if you own, live with family, or have a landlord who doesn't jack up rents with market... there's no actual rent control in the south bay, though I know a few people paying vastly below-market rents because they've been renting from the same person for a decade or more, and that person is being cool. There's serious rent control in San Francisco proper.)
This... is probably why companies are opening up branch offices; there are many good people who just won't move here because the cost, but that's because we aren't expensive enough, not because we're too expensive.