Why a “coastal” tech employer?

The wages in SV price in the cost of living to a certain extent. I’m assuming if the remote work pattern continues, we can’t be expected to make coastal salaries while living in rural Wyoming any more that we would expect a FAANG company to pay an overseas employee SV salaries.

I work in embedded systems, firmware and hardware. Unfortunately, I've got a solid decade of professional development before I can justify going freelance competitively. The thousands of dollars in test equipment is quite the barrier.

But even if I wasn't in a field that requires time spent hands-on with the physical hardware, a lot of companies (my former employer in the Bay Area amongst them) insist on in-person work for most positions, even if the position doesn't really require it. And so it goes, people making $60K in Wichita or wherever glibly say "I can get a house for $180K, you make 5 times what I make, complaining about million dollar homes is just a rich person lacking perspective". Even if you do the math and show that holy cow, homes are expensive in tech hubs, even considering the median income, all people see is how high the median income, and assume that there's no real problem.