But I disagree with "f2f for god knows what reason.". Face-to-face is really important to lots of people. That group of people is relatively less well-represented in HN comment sections, where lots of hacker types who are motivated by the work and would prefer to avoid socialization hang out, but it's a huge factor for lots of people.
I, for one, am considering changing jobs to find one with an office as soon as possible if my workplace doesn't go back to having a physical office, which it looks like it won't.
(Obviously things can get trickier across national borders, but that falls under the "with no issues" clause.)
A lot of people seem to operate under the assumption that there's a huge pool of talented engineers outside the tech major metros, eager to work for cheap salaries.
I just don't see it all. The reality is almost all talented engineers are currently being paid tech industry salaries. Yes, there's a lot of IT workers making $85k at regional banks in suburban Ohio. But the vast majority of these workers are not anywhere near skilled enough to step into a typical SV role. (I've seen the codebases of Ohio regional banks... they certainly wouldn't pass review at Google.) There's a huge shortage of software engineers-- everywhere, not just in the Bay Area.
Imagining that FAANG giants are just gonna hire a bunch of cheap IT workers from middle America, is like imagining that Goldman Sachs is going to replace their investment bankers with loan officers Missouri.
2 devs with the same abilities will have different willingness to work in a situation because of their cost base.
Essentially, one gets more because they are demanding more and that demand is based on a kind of very hard negotiating legitimacy, and the company, on the other side of the table knows that and knows they have to concede if they want the table.
I don't think the cost of living shifts are quite that much however, they are generally not a true reflection of the change in cost of living, just a minor adjustment.
At an individual scale, you have to pay enough to convince the person to join your company over their other options. Their set of other options is still heavily influenced by geography, so geography is a always factor in the negotiation.
On a global scale, developer compensation in the US is an outlier, and not just in expensive cities like SF. If you truly want pay equality, you have two options: Either raise everyone’s pay to That of the most expensive market you want to hire in, or simply exclude the expensive markets from your hiring plans so you can bring the number down.
Ignoring geography in compensation discussions sounds great, until you realize that they end game is reversion to the global mean, which means most US salaries would have to come down. Way down.
For the company: - Lower productivity (burnout, people not adequately connected, people not on same page, more difficult to manager remote workers, more distractions) - Less innovation - Less / No company culture - Less employee satisfaction; harder to recruit at all WFT firms - Difficulty onboarding new employees
For employees: - Competing with talent globally, lower wages - Fewer perks - Less community, more atomization
Many of us were working remotely before the current situation. I guess that makes me not average. But many people are saying they're looking forward to not going back to a commute every day even if they stay in the same general area and maybe go in a day or two a week for collaboration/meetings. The big negative for me has been working remotely during a pandemic with my usual 100 or so days of travel curtailed.