> That’s not really true. There are companies with a few employees in expensive locations and many in low income regions. If you switched everyone to the same salary you’d bankrupt the company. I certain don’t assume to know what Gitlab’s financials look like.
There's a slight of hand going on here, where you at first assume all employees are fungible, to mention it's not possible for some firms to pay all employees the same.
But then you ignore that, before someone is hired, when they're merely a potential-hire, they _are_ (basically) fungible with all the other potential-hires. If you can afford the most expensive one, you can afford the cheaper one.
No one suggested paying everyone the same huge amount. But if you are paying Huge Amount X, that can go anywhere.
But that is the reason why San Francisco has higher pays, there is a huge competition between employers. In practice what you propose is not to hire in expensive places.
Which is what many companies do in practice. Say there's a company that's not in the Bay Area and has some potentially remote openings. As a Bay Area resident, go in demanding a FAANG in-person salary and most of them will laugh at you unless you're someone very unique who they need.
I mean, I strongly encourage all people who, when presented with the option of getting a very good deal on an expensive and valuable thing, to take it.
In equilibrium, you'd expect someone's programming skillset not to massively drop in value because they moved slightly far away in essentially the same legal jurisdiction. Until we reach that equilibrium, there is money waiting to be collected by firms who hire American engineers to work remotely.
In my understanding when you move away from hot-spots like San Francisco it is not your skill that loses value, but you that lose power in asking for an higher salary.
Also it is not that devs in SF are especially good; I would guess that the distribution of skill is power law (specifically the number of devs in the global n-th percentile as a function of the total number of devs in the hiring pool) and it might be argued that the competitions is counterbalancing any positive effect of that.
In the end it is a position of which job market do you want to be in.
There's a slight of hand going on here, where you at first assume all employees are fungible, to mention it's not possible for some firms to pay all employees the same.
But then you ignore that, before someone is hired, when they're merely a potential-hire, they _are_ (basically) fungible with all the other potential-hires. If you can afford the most expensive one, you can afford the cheaper one.
No one suggested paying everyone the same huge amount. But if you are paying Huge Amount X, that can go anywhere.