True that they cannot limit you. Except working at a FLiNG company what I have noticed is (sadly) they dont really think much of talent unless you are a brand name (creator of any obscure framework we are stuck with and cannot get out of). Reality is given the normalizing nature of our interviewing processes (leetcode puzzles) without a Brand, a dev (regardless of experience) in the bay area is qualitatively "same" as their counter parts outside - except BA ones are a fair bit costlier.