It's all about competition and the ability of companies to attract workers to work they way they want. There's a cost of living in hiring workers and competition pressures. There's a lot of competition for workers in the bay area, that drives up what you can get as a worker (if company x paid much less you'd go somewhere else that paid more). It costs more to live there but is that cause or effect of so many workers. If facebook didn't pay enough to afford to live there then you wouldn't work there. I imagine this happens in NYC yet plenty of people manage to survive on way less than I could.

In the article he says it's not fair to pay more in SF or similar cities but that's somewhat subjective. Since I currently live in a tech city I want them to pay me more, it partly covers the cost of living here.

The author wants more equal pay, to not depend on where you live, I want to be able to move to a random location and work remotely and still get paid the same. But how far out do I live before fb pays me less? You could already be paid a SF salary (in many companies) and commute to work a few days a week and work from home. Big companies probably already have people in every state and many locales. The economy is a barrier to this for smaller companies, having to have a local taxation and perhaps some business licenses plan.

I think at first big cos will reduce pay if you move outside the big city, but they will struggle to define it in a way that satisfies people. Then there will start to be competition for remote workers picking up salaries. But I still expect they'll pay more for people working in big cities because workers there will resist salary deflation.

People have been claiming this since wipro was working out of a garage :-P Haven't seen it yet, don't really expect to see it. Top tier salaries may come down a bit, but I think salaries in lower CoL areas will go up.

There's still a shortage of tech workers, and the 'remote craze' gives workers access to more employers as well. The power dynamic is not all one sided.

(I say this as having lived/worked remotely thru the last 'off-shorting' craze...anecdata is anecdotal)