Or these companies can move. If you take successful STEM related businesses and move them to better area's the talent will follow. There is more than 1 answer to this problem, most people just want to change laws because its easier for them.
The diaspora from the Bay Area will keep happening the way it has been: at the economic margins. Over time, people outside of tech who aren’t subsidized by prop 13 or rent control will get priced out. There will be a perpetual underclass living in trailers and garages, and the landed aristocracy will be further entrenched.
As far as expand elsewhere goes, google has many staff in many countries and cities all over the world.
How much less productive would these workers be if they were moved to Salt Lake City or Henderson, NV or Syracuse, NY?
If you lost 20% of the productivity but could pay 30% less that would be OK, wouldn't it?
None of this is to argue that big tech companies shouldn't be more distributed. They probably should and it's happening to some degree naturally as they grow. But trying to move already employed people wholesale to a new city, especially one that many will see as relatively unattractive, will cost you a significant percentage of your workforce.
The most you'll see is something like what Amazon (sort of) tried with creating a "second HQ".
There are too many people who feel like they _have_ to live there (or NYC / insert overly populated city here) to have a career, that any sort of correction will take decades.
I'm asking this to find out your definition of overpopulation. Because the people that want to move here don't think that's the case, and I certainly don't think that's the case given how low population density is throughout the Bay Area.
And since high density walkable neighborhoods are healthier for people and the environment than car dependent sprawl, I think that we are actually underpopulated.
What you're not bothering to grapple with is: why are these companies trying to expand headcount in areas that are somewhat hostile to them, and also much more expensive? Hell, even in Europe, Google's big offices are in the most expensive cities. There's a reason for that, and it's not because they enjoy lighting money on fire.
Once you've figured out the 'why' there, you can work on coming up with a fix or workaround. Until then, just blithely saying "well they're just too lazy to do this other thing" itself just smacks of intellectual laziness. It lets you slam them without having to analyze the very real issues keeping companies in expensive tech hubs.
And big companies already do have lots of engineering offices, it's just still beneficial to have a big main hub, there are costs to fragmentation.
Yes, in 20 years, you end up with sprawl, but thats better than crashing someone elses hood and wanting it to morph into Manhattan.
These people probably arent getting fired. They’re flighty, pursuing to dollar, self-actualization, doing good, whatever. Which is perfectly fine and reasonable until they all want to live in the same handful of zipcodes. I just dont understand why society needs to accomodate that anymore than why Jackson Hole should accomadate my need for a $250k 2-bdr condo with ski-out.