Unless a company has infinite budgets and plans to maintain small org sizes forever, keeping your entire workforce in the Bay Area doesn’t really scale.
The real question to ask is: Where are these new jobs? Remote? Satellite offices? New foreign offices? Remote is the hot topic, but I haven’t actually seen as many remote listings as I expected given all of the talk. For many of these companies, it could be as simple as opening new offices in other cities. If they’re opening offices in expensive locations like Seattle or NYC then it’s not really about cost of living.
On the other hand, if they really are embracing remote and hiring out of non-traditional locations then maybe it is more about cost of hiring. However, in that case I’ve personally experienced companies become eager to skip the US altogether and start hiring in even cheaper international locations with untapped talent. It’s complicated.
> Talent in the Bay Area are fetching astonishing pay ($600k for L6)
While it’s true that top Bay Area engineers can fetch $600K, it’s much more rare than it can look. Take a look at the median compensation for software engineers in the Bay Area some time. It’s a fraction of that number. Those ultra high paying FAANG jobs aren’t the typical software job, even in the Bay Area.
> A fried of mine refused to interview for position like that despite being very junior! She decided the cost of living is not worth it.
Top Bay Area compensation should be enough to offset the higher cost of living for someone living in an apartment. The cost of living for something like a 1 or even 2-bedroom apartment is negligible for someone who can get into a FAANG job in the Bay.
On the other hand, taking a median software job in the Bay Area is definitely not worth the cost of living increase, IMO, unless you’re using it as a pivot into a FAANG level job later.