What is interesting to me is how unwilling startups seem to be to: - Grow their own talent internally by hiring inexperience.
- Entertain SOME SORT OF telecommuting arrangement for those not in the Bay area. Doing this would open up the rest of the West coast for '1 Week in the Office per month, 3 weeks work from home' arrangements.
- Pay for relocation. YMMV but I don't see it that often.
- Open satellite offices in areas where talent is easier and less expensive to get. The space shuttle program just ended, and there are BUNCHES of good engineers looking for something interesting to do (In Florida). Georgia Tech has a legacy of churning out smart engineers (In Georgia). San Diego still has double digit unemployment (Plus the surf is better than SF!), and there are dots and pockets of good engineering talent all across the sunbelt with cities, states, and municipalities who would LOVE to incentivize 'hot start-ups' to open an office there.
This is a case where I can see acu-hiring makes sense. Get a 5-10 person team that is already kicking ass and in an office, swallow them up for $1m/head. Boom, for the price of $10m you just got 10 engineers who already work well as a team, a satellite office that you can use as an anchor in a new geography, and an escape from the localized talent war.