> if the foreigner was so good as the American engineer why wouldn’t they be getting paid the same as the American

You should also ask whether you're paying American so much because they are so good, or are you paying them so much because rents in SF are so high?

> Covid hits and everyone goes remote, but the salaries only go up. They always go up.

Once again, did it go up because COVID infections somehow made american workers even better or because lockdowns caused mini tech boom while money printing tanked the dollar's value?