Thank about that. This thread starts by saying it’s unfair to pay based on location and a given person provides the same value from anywhere, yet the worlds most successful companies choose to hire in the most expensive locations. Programmers in SF must be more valuable or companies wouldn’t hire there. In fact wages are high because of demand for that location itself not justness the cluster of talent there. As a remote company owner who hires in both North America and Asia, Timezones matter a lot. We have some incredible devs in Asia who I’d pay twice as much if they moved here. It’s not about living cost, it’s about opportunity cost for both sides. Salaries are a negotiation, and location matters to the extent the parties involved say it does.
“Programmers in SF must be more valuable or companies wouldn’t hire there.”
Or, that’s where companies are and they’ll take what they can get in the area because they like having warm bodies in the office rather than dealing with better qualified remote workers (like practically every company)?
I think it's a mix really. I think there are a lot of founders who really believe that SF developers are worth the 2x (or more!) markup. Personally, I don't think it's true at all -- in fact, hot markets tend to attract people who want money, not people who are talented.
On the other hand, non-collocated teams are challenging and if you have very little experience running a team (as many young founders do) it might be wise to hire locally -- at least at the beginning. I think a lot of founders also probably underestimate the amount of time they'll need to get off the ground. So if they have $5M, it might seem OK to have a burn rate of $2M per year (I'm using pseudo-random numbers). They'll think, "If we can't get another big round in 2 1/2 years, then we might as well move on to something else". So they are willing to pay the money.
This is a really good point, and I hope they come up with a another proof of work algorithm that does something useful like protein folding, or switch to "proof of stake" which is not compute intensive alternative.
