I work remotely for a company in the Cupertino area while living on 2 acres in the south of France – my entire “estate” cost less than a 2 bedroom apartment would have cost in SFO. Even commuting monthly for two days of meetings is still cheaper than living in the Bay Area.

I would like to live in the Bay Area but it’s financial suicide.

There's not much remote work available. Those jobs are the most desirable and also the very hardest to get. In the past 10 years, i've received 100s of calls from desperate recruiters looking for Software engineers: and every single time, it's because they're looking to fill positions of companies in Palo Alto or San Francisco. Anytime, I ask them to find a position outside of the penninsula or SF, they turn up empty handed (east bay).

Companies can learn from this as well: there's a difference between # of workers working in a field and labor supply vs labor demand.

I think we're starting to see a shift. Today, as a hiring manager that hires remote workers, I have the pick-of-the-litter when it comes to talent for my team (infrastructure engineering). I can find the very best folks, people that I would have a much harder time winning when up against the FANGs (Facebook-Amazon-Netflix-Google) of the world if I was hiring in my company's SFBA home base.

Having remote-friendliness in my pocket, I can be choosy and can hire strong senior-level folks. I think it's inevitable that the rest of the Valley catches on and figures out how to make remote work for them. When this happens, I think we'll see who things:

- A leveling-up of remote salaries. Not such a big deal at my company and on my team, because we don't hold someone's remoteness against them and we pay fair SFBA salaries. Other companies (GitLab, etc.) adjust salaries based on cost-of-living. This is a reduced-fare lunch for them but probably not sustainable. Other companies are going to catch on and snap up top talent at average SFBA comp levels and the salary-savers will be forced to level up.

- SFBA talent will start leaving the Bay Area for more affordable and enjoyable areas. We'll see engineers moving to Central American beach towns, Colorado ski towns, back home to flyover states, etc.

Interesting. Where do you usually advertise remote positions, Chris?

The HN Who's Hiring thread, our website, a few other job sites, etc. You can probably find it in my recent comment history.

What's a 5/4 house?

The Midwest is stereotypical for "affordable living" but I live in New England and it's fairly affordable here too in comparison. I own a three bedroom in town, with 20% down my P+I is $750 a month and PITI is $1275 a month. If I financed the whole thing the PITI would be $1462 a month. I think my housing cost is about average for the US.

> What's a 5/4 house?

5 bedrooms/4 bathrooms

I think here, it means 5 bedroom 4 bath.

>With all of the remote work available, why would you stay here?

As the other comments have said, remote work is extremely competitive, low paying, and unstable on the whole unfortunately.

It's either tough it out and deal with the gauntlet of traditional tech interviews and sky high rents in the Bay Area, or hustle your ass off 24/7 competing with the millions of new CS grads in India and China who are just as skilled as you (or more) and can work for $4/hr.