It occurs to me to wonder: is it going to end up being a general rule that SWE jobs that can be done remotely are going to pay less than SWE jobs that require specific geographic location or coming into the office over time? It feels like the naive supply-demand calculation suggests that a company willing to accept remote work has a much broader talent supply to draw from, which would lower labor cost.
Some remote companies such as Atlassian, Affirm, Dropbox have different pay zones to offset the cost of living in various places.
For example, in Atlassian https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers/resources/intervie..., the 3 pay zones are - Zone A: SF - Zone B: Boston, LA, NYC, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle, Washington D.C. - Zone C: all others Zone B is 90% of Zone A's pay and Zone C is ~82% of Zone A's pay.
Agree that company willing to accept remote work has a broader talent supply and can be an advantage in hiring talents not in the big tech cities. I am not sure if it necessarily lead to lower labor cost due to competitions with other remote companies also hiring in those regions. Competitions would help keep the labor cost up.