Except that a lot of tech companies are out in the suburbs...
1) I live in San Francisco. A ton of residents here commute to Mountain View and environs for work. A ton.
2) Most of those residents are young.
3) One of the few things that has been reliably proven to improve your happiness - even more than a salary bump! - is reducing your commute time.
4) With WFH (work from home) everyone who commutes from SF to elsewhere could cut their commute from 2 hrs round trip, daily, to 0.
5) Ergo, a ton of young people would quickly see the logic of this: WFH and cut your commute time to 0. They would want this option, and they will take it.
I know this complicated somewhat by the fact that you can work from the buses, but I still don't see the overcoming this widely shared preference, for no commute.
Reducing time commuting on a comfy megacorporation’s arms-length-contracted-carriage-provider bus has been studied much less, and it’s not nearly as clear it improves people’s happiness that much.
Also, taking your commute time to zero isn’t obviously an improvement in happiness; there’s a lot of psychological benefit to having a separate space for work and home life. It’s possible for some people to prepare a home office that successfully feels separate, but it’s not automatic.
That's the thing ... this discussion isn't saying everyone has to move away from SF, that's ludicrous. But if you want to live in SF, my point is why would you want to have to be on public transit for four hours every single day? It takes time you could use for living your life, and contributes to pollution.
In an ideal world, you could live in SF, work for google remotely, and maybe pop into campus every few days or even weeks, as needed. And then google can also hire from the millions of developers that live elsewhere as well. That way: you could live on the beach, live in socal, live in norcal, live on a farm in Iowa, live in Hawaii, live in New Jersey ... whatever kind of life you want to build, would not have to be linked to whether there is a company you want to work for in that place.