In that case it would likely not seem absurd because presumably there would be some extra inherent value in luxury car drivers (e.g., uber drivers).
That's the point actually. Driving a luxury car is equally as irrelevant as location. There really isn't a good reason for a company to reward employees for how those employees spend money outside of work.
If you're buying a car and it comes with a high power engine that you don't care about, you still have to pay the premium for the engine. You can't pay less because you tell the seller that you won't utilize the extra power. The car has a higher market price because there are people that will pay extra for the high power engine.
For a company with all remote employees, location is indeed irrelevant. Unless you're claiming there are no developers in the whole rest of the world that would do the job equally well for cheaper, which seems unlikely. Or unless you can back up the claim that developers in certain locations are simply better than ones in other locations, which seems to be what you're implying.
As an anecdotal counter example, I have moved several times in my career, and don't recall it ever affecting my productivity.
> If you're buying a car and it comes with a high power engine that you don't care about, you still have to pay the premium for the engine. You can't pay less because you tell the seller that you won't utilize the extra power. The car has a higher market price because there are people that will pay extra for the high power engine.
I don't see what that example has to do with anything.
This statement is still correct and less loaded if you remove the words "get to".
I have no idea why a fully-remote company would want their developers to live in Silicon Valley so much that they would pay a premium for it. Why even bother being fully-remote then?
If the SV developer's value to the company is the same but they get paid more, then you're saying to all the other developers who work there, "You produce enough value that we could pay you this much, but we don't want to. We prefer to pay you less, simply because we can."
This is, of course, their right, but that sort of thing tends to make people unhappy, and unhappy employees tend to be unproductive, and then gone.
Several people here are taking it as a given that a technology company has to hire some quota of people from the Valley.
It's like wanting developers to drive a luxury car so much they would pay a premium for luxury car owners.
You try to make it sound ridiculous by changing location with the car they drive, but that is intellectually dishonest because it's not clear remote work is as efficient. There is a reason Google doesn't allow it.
But to a remote company, it's just as irrelevant as a luxury car. It's an artificial segment of the market to them. They don't need to enter the frenzy. There is a equilibrium of global supply and demand that is lower than SV equlibrium. Replace your SV hires with the others at that price, and save money. Capitalize on your remote work, instead of tossing it aside.
Or, more accurately, not to pay for the high power engine. Choose and pay for the car independent of the irrelevant factor of engine power. If the best value car (from your perspective) happens to be one with a high power engine, then you'll get that one. But you don't pay more for one, especially when your prospective market is broad (the entire world).
Just like with the car analogy, if you need to put together a fleet of vehicles immediately, you will have to buy anything that is available, including the one with the bigger engine.
That's self-induced due to your treatment of the market. Suppose you'll pay SV devs 170k.
Do you have any idea how easy it would be to replace those spots by offering 160k (regardless of location)? And you'll save money.
Most devs, FYI, do not live in SV area. The market for remote work is huge.