I wish, but not in my country. Remote here means 2-3 days/week WFH tops and that's it. Nobody offers more. Meaning you're still tied to the location of your employer as you have to come regularly in the office.
It boggles my mind that employers don't see the advantage of employing people remotely nation-wide as that gives them access to a wider talent pool outside their area making it a win-win. But no, old-school boomer MBA managers want to see buts in seats in the office, otherwise to them it means people are slacking off as they can't possibly imagine motivating people to work if they're not within physical reach.
We also need to post pictures of the employees pretending to have fun at barbecues, teambuilding events and sitting in cramped open space offices on yoga balls wearing headphones with coffee mugs with nerdy memes on them. But it's ok, there's a weekly fruit basked, employee organized sports events and you can bring your dog to work. Totally worth spening 2h per day on commuting.
I’ve walked the path. Developers won’t develop anything good for $200k, but they will if you give them attention, care, events, and hope. I literally have to refrain myself from giving higher raises, because I’ve made people rich in the past and they’ve stopped being motivated. The more you pay them, the more they have the thrill to play competition.
(Please watch me if I don’t give them fat equity for the exit event, God, they deserve it).
That seems to be the Silicon Valley investment paradigm. Needed for attracting VC money. Otherwise, the users never gave a sh*t about those, they still don't. The rest of the tech world did not operate under such a paradigm either. I also suspect that it will also end in SV as the zero interest economy ended and the investment landscape changed. Now profitability is being valued instead of unprofitable infinite growth that may or may not be profitable in the future.
Lots and lots of companies have completely embraced remote work. You are not hearing from them because once they embraced it they found people better than you [1] who'll work for a tenth of the price. In other words, offshore.
Put another way, you're only seeing Office-work positions, because once they grasp that the job can be done remotely, they grasp that you're expensive.
I know, I know, soooo many reasons they should pay more to get you. On the other hand the entire manufacturing industry figured out "remote manufacturing" means cheap labor...
[1] obviously I'm speaking generally because I don't know you. But statistically it's likely to be true.
I know the companies in my country, they don't offshore because offshoring has additional overhead and costs they can't afford(small and medium companies), so they mostly prefer local workers they can tap on shoulder, and preferably German speaking.
And those few companies who do offshore(mostly banks and other large enterprises) already had offices abroad, no need for the pandemic to convince them.
Also when a family has/needs two parents working, Spouse A's next job becomes limited to locations that do not require Spouse B to also quit, and vice-versa.
I have a pet theory that dual-incomes are one cause of movement to urban locations: The family needs to be in a location with enough overlapping opportunities in each person's role/field.
As soon as that dual income want kids and can afford it on a signal income in suburbia, they'll take it most of the time.
Just my .02
The average cost of living for a 4-person family in SF is ~$350k [1] (I'm guessing that's pre-tax, and probably the job is also paying for 100% comprehensive medical & dental insurance for the entire family) and my spouse wouldn't be able to work (and even if she could, low chance of her also getting a $200k job offer at the same time!), and I'm not gonna willingly decrease my standard of living and my savings rate ...
I mean, I don't mind if that's their budget, I always mention that it probably makes more sense to hire someone local, but ... why even bother interviewing senior non-SF-based candidates in the first place?
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/27/how-much-money-family-of-4-n...
Sure, many people when they're young are geographically flexible. But that's less true as you age and are tied down by a house, spouse's job, kid's school, daycare, etc.
If you have to come into work, then all those details depend on your job location. You can't just change job locations. Again, this works for some single young people who rent apartments in NYC or SF. But that will always be a subset of job candidates.
This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable. There are just too many incentives for too much of the workforce to require it. Long term that
Of course these things have always been true, but since remote work became prevalent I think people have realized how shitty of a situation it is - especially when you're not compensated for it. In fact you are actually compensated LESS since you arent job hopping.