Relatively few live in Dayton, Ohio (random example) and even fewer are willing to live there.
The advantage of remote working is you can draw from talent all over the world (or at least all over the US) without having to worry about the fact that a lot of people would be unwilling to live in your particular LCOL area.
You say this, but others say there is a chronic shortage of talent in the area. Having the largest concentration of X does no good if local demand is X+Y.
I personally will not go near the Bay Area for less than $200k base. Considering the Bay Area exodus story posted yesterday, it sounds like there are thousands of people with similar opinions.
> Relatively few live in Dayton, Ohio (random example) and even fewer are willing to live there.
Fortunately Dayton is one of hundreds of decent-sized metro areas that are not the Bay Area. Every one has negatives and every one has people not willing to move there. So does the Bay Area.
> The advantage of remote working is you can draw from talent all over the world (or at least all over the US) without having to worry about the fact that a lot of people would be unwilling to live in your particular LCOL area.
I think the idea is to do clusters. Do light offices in any metro area where you hire more than one person. It provides the flexibility of a distributed team with the benefits of having some people colocated.
There's a shortage in the market, but at least there is a market.
If I wanted to hire a team of 20 Go engineers, I could do it in SV. It might be expensive but I could do it relatively easily. I'm unconvinced I could hire the same team for less in Dayton.
> I personally will not go near the Bay Area for less than $200k base. Considering the Bay Area exodus story posted yesterday, it sounds like there are thousands of people with similar opinions.
Neither would I. The problem is that the alternatives to SV are different for everyone. For example, I'd be happy to live in Vermont or Minnesota. But you'd have to pay me even more than $200k to get me to live in the South. Meanwhile, there are thousands of other people who would never live in Vermont.
Remote working lets everyone live in their personal "best value" city. If you're insistent on having people colocated, you're still going to be better off having your offices in a place which enough people are attracted to that it's not hard to convince people to live there.
> Do light offices in any metro area where you hire more than one person.
I don't really see the benefit of this. You're incurring all the costs of having a distributed team but not gaining some of the biggest benefits (letting people work from wherever they want).
Also, if we're talking about being frugal rather than relying on VC money, why not pick an area with a good university but not so much of a "city scene"/VC-land-ness, and hire college students? For example, Urbana-Champaign, IL. That way you're drawing from a pool where not all the talent has been snapped up yet, and the rent is usually reasonable because students have to live there.
just go remote all in