Remote wages are surely lower than SF today, but so are non-remote wages everywhere as well.

From a non-Bay Area company point of view, it simply doesn't make any sense to hire remote employees that are in the Bay Area, when you can pay above market rates for top-talent employees in Chicago, Vancouver, Berlin, London, etc. and still pay less than half the going SF rate. I think this is also why Bay Area employees are still dismissive of remote, it's taking off everywhere else but the factors that are making SF the highest paid area are also what makes it the least attractive for remote hiring.

But I think what we'll see is, as SF companies themselves slowly start hiring remotely it will push up both remote and local wages globally. Non-SF and non-remote companies will have a harder time competing as their local employees now also have high-paying remote job opportunities from SF companies to consider.

It's certainly possible that Stripe is offering productivity as the reason for their embrace of remote work when it's really about cheaper labor, but I'm hopeful. I know there are other companies where those decisions are transparently about lowering costs, but if what you say about remote workers typically getting less equity is true, too, that's pretty disappointing.

Buffer (which has been remote-heavy for a long time) handled this by explicitly breaking their salary assessment into multiple elements. In addition to base salary-for-role and various experience adjustments, they have a public "price sheet" describing the cost of living adjustments they apply for different locations.

It's not a perfect system, I'm sure. CoL is reduced to three fairly broad bands, and other pay elements like experience and performance are potentially skewed by remote status. But I think it's an appealing approach in general. Candidates know in advance what to expect and can move somewhere more expensive without needing to find a new job. Meanwhile, the company saves some money, but still gets access to remote candidates in expensive cities where they don't have offices.

I suppose it would drive away any remote worker who's consciously living somewhere cheap to increase effective salary, but presumably that's offset by getting access to people in DC, NYC, Boston, etc. who aren't open to other cost-saving remote jobs.

Why would the cost of living factor into salary at all?

I write the code. I offer architectural decisions. I'm working on the most demanded features by the customers, bringing more value to the product.

What if I pair program on a feature from a person in SF? My efforts are still paid less.

Who cares if I wrote the code from SF or Vietnam.

I wish more remote workers would stand up to these businesses looking for a way to lower their costs.

As for the engineers, the whole "midwest nice", "flyover feebleness", "sure is great to just have an opportunity to work remotely" mindset has to change. Don't let them discount your value.

Stand up to them by doing what? Moving to SF? Turning down the job and working for a local company that pays even less?

Put multiple offers against each other?

If you're already in a remote engineering position, show that you bring more value than Tom in SF, even though he's paid more.

That's pretty difficult right now since not that many companies offer remote (yet).

Honestly I don’t know how fair businesses can be with respect to this while being economically rational. Differences in markets are very real, and if you can get good developers who can’t work in the US for less, why not? It’s not surprising the Zoom founder tried so hard to make it to America.

Sometimes a driver is that you may pay lower wages than an in-office employee in, say SFBA, while still higher than average in the area the employee works in, so win-win. Similar to the logic that drives some remote/satellite offices to places they can grab some of the best local talent by paying above local-market, and still save quite a bit on salaries.