Also if the hire is living on a ranch in Montana then at least as of today they don't have that many companies to choose from if they turn you down for a lower salary than Bay Area engineers get. In SF they can just walk down the street to the next place but there aren't that many really remote companies out there.

I mean companies that you don't transition to remote but start off as remote and are treated as a first-class employee the whole time and that the workflows are remote-friendly.