I pay for my computer. I pay for my own coffee/tea. I pay the electrical bill. I pay for my phone/internet. My quality of life goes up massively.
God forbid we work remote and avoid traffic and all the headaches of commuting.
It's all but fact that a 40 hour work week doesn't result in 40 hours of productivity. Those non productive hours are seen as acceptable in an office for some reason, but when you're at home and can fire up a video game, it's sacrilege.
I worked for a company based in the valley who bought a company that had some remote offices. I was at one of the remote offices.
The acquiring company had technical support teams in the valley too so that they could be "close to the engineers". We got a lot of "don't know if these guys out in Minnesota can do this..." kind of push back, lots of talk about how they all had computer science degrees / we did not, but they couldn't find enough warm bodies in the area so they were told they had to take us on.
So I traveled out there to see these hot shot super smart guys and after about half a day I was astonished by how ... not super high performers these guys were. In about a month we were out performing them on every metric (granted metrics can suck) and they accused us openly of "cheating". So they got someone to audit all the metrics, they found the guys in the valley were "cheating" (effectively they were closing cases regardless of resolution).
And about that being "close to the engineers", the engineering teams actually asked cases be transferred to me as they got tired of the work the local guys were doing and their habit of not thinking before they'd go over to the next building and hand them a half through through problem. At times to skip the bureaucracy, folks in the valley would call me in MN, to then contact an engineering manager in CA to get them going, the engineering team's management knew I didn't create false alarms / wouldn't send them into a bad spot flying blind.
Now beyond the management bickering I actually got along with those guys, but it was a constant battle of people just not believing that other people could get the job done. They thought they were amazing, but really they had no clue what was outside the valley and a couple other cities. They just assumed about the rest of the world. Meanwhile we also were about 2/3rds the cost and were more productive.
Eventually the company was bought again and they cut all the remote offices altogether. After I was laid off, my job went up on the internet, no remote workers (job is back in the valley), computer science degree required, many years experience required. All for a job an ok college grad could do, maybe even less than that, but they just don't belive it.
I used to live in Austin but after getting a remote job I moved to LA. I get to live in an amazing, walkable neighborhood and rarely deal with the notorious LA commuting nightmare.
Downtown is great if you want a true urban feel and don't mind the homeless. I found a deal on rent but was looking heavily at Macarther park to Koreatown area.
I've heard parts of Hollywood are good and pretty well connected on transit lines but didn't really explore.
There are many people who live in west hollywood, downtown, santa monica who don't have cars! lyft/uber are also relatively cheap here.
That and most companies pay based off "cost of living" and you cannot expect Bay Area pay outside of the Bay Area. Asking for work-anywhere-in-the-world remote work basically feels like shooting yourself in the foot if you value compensation.
Well, it obviously can (states having general police power and there being no federal right to non-remote work incorporated against the states that would bar such legislation), but it probably shouldn't.
I think a permanent telepresence can avoid some of these issues. But it brings to fore some privacy issues where people at work have a video feed into your home (its office space - but its your home nonetheless).
Most managers here think remote work = staying at home playing video games, even if you're lucky enough to find a company ok with you doing 1 or 2 days per week at home, you have to report everything you do because they're extra paranoid about it
So it's still not easy, especially if you're junior, but from my experience I don't think the situation in US is much better.