> I can’t tell you the reason, but people are just obsessed with this “end of San Francisco” narrative despite a ton of hard evidence to the contrary. I studied CS after the dotcom and people were convinced all programming jobs were going abroad since programming can be done anywhere, instead Bay Area engineering comp quadrupled. Now instead of going to Mumbai it’s going to Denver or Montana, doubtful.

I think this depends on your personal definition of San Francisco. Toward the end of the last wave of tech (2017-2019 I estimate), a lot of the folks moving here to work were more interested in the income and prestige of working in a "cool SV company", along with the social-status effect of working in a "hip city" rather than actually doing interesting/hard work with interesting people. These folks can still brag about their prestigious employers and their fat salaries if they work remotely. These are the folks for whom the "end of San Francisco" is welcome, as they weren't particularly interested in the location anyway, and with a pandemic going on, there's no social status to be gained by living in a "hip city". For folks that are here for the weather and the intellectual, cultural, and racial diversity and prowess, I doubt the Valley and SF will be overshadowed any time soon. I don't really hard hard numbers for this though, so I could just be full of sh--.