Well...sort of. Ann is paid $170K because Bay-area companies have bid up the cost of Bay-area developers to $170K.

Ann doesn't really have a say in this, and it has nothing to do with how much value she adds to the company (although obviously a company wouldn't fork over 170K if she didn't add at least that much value to the company).

Now if Ann moves to Costa Rica, she is now a Costa Rica-based remote developer. And I suspect that Costa Rica-based remote developers have not been bid up to the same level as Bay-area based developers. So her employer would certainly be justified in seeking a downward salary adjustment.

This would mean hiring companies would need to accommodate remote workers; are they willing to for the cost benefit? My experience says no (except for <100 companies that are remote first).

The Bay area seems to have a positive-feedback loop going on. Highly-paid programmers have bid up the cost of housing to astonishing heights.

So when companies want to attract more developers, they have to offer even higher salaries, which lead to housing costs being bid up even more.

This... is not the primary driver of the insane housing costs in the area. A survey from a year or two back found that tech workers make up ~8% of SF's population.

For a variety of reasons, [0] it's nearly impossible to build new housing in San Francisco. I get the impression that the situation is similar in much of the Bay Area.

In San Francisco, for the past decade or so for every new unit of housing created, roughly five people have entered the city. [1]

Add supply to take care of the backlog and meet expected medium-term demand, and you'll see prices stabilize (and maybe return to less-insane levels).

[0] The least of which is Rent Stabilization. :)

[1] You could make the argument that "If noone was able to pay the insane prices, the prices wouldn't be insane." This is true, but -frankly- there are lots of very highly-paid people out there. As far as "highly-paid" people go, tech workers really aren't all that highly-paid. :) (I know of decent-to-good engineering sales [2] folks working at bigcos that make between 2 and 10x what I understand mid-level Google engineers to make.)

[2] That is, salesmen that also have a technical background, can handle crunchy sales and configuration questions, and can even do real, deep troubleshooting of the product they're selling.

I'm in the wrong business.

nod nod

If you've both the people and technical skills required to do engineering sales, you're probably seriously limiting your earnings by remaining a programmer.

Sadly, I forget what these positions are actually called. Best of luck in your hunt! I hope you find and fill such a position and are both happy and richly rewarded in it. :D

Edit: terminology

Yep. Obviously. I hope that you didn't think that I thought otherwise.

From what I've read about the topic, it seems like a few things are true:

* Housing costs are rising radically throughout the Bay Area

* No major Bay Area city is building to meet demand in the area

* Some Bay Area cities (notably, SF, MV, SJ, and others) are actively impeding new residential construction with a variety of pleasant-sounding excuses

It's true that SF's fucked-up housing policy doesn't necessarily mean much for the rest of the Bay Area. However, it's a sad fact that the landowners in much of The Area have -correctly- surmised that they stand to make a shitload of money if they fail to build to meet demand.

Fuck housing that's reasonably priced when there are pockets to be lined and fortunes to be made, amirite? :(

The latter was driven by a strong belief in many Bay Area startups and companies that remote work doesn't work well, and that you get more output per head and more productivity if you sit next to your developers. That's what the premium is for in that case, usually with a tech stack that is relatively easy to find people for (e.g. RoR, PHP, Python).

The former was driven by rare knowledge with few customers, all of whom have good reasons to be relatively price insensitive to get the job done.

Pick your strategy accordingly...

That $170k is what it's worth for her, as a person, to switch jobs for.

I've always wondered if this is even possible. Imagine you are a Trust Fund Kid who happens to be a skilled developer as well as a giant troll. You could under-bid on salary offers. But would the company still hire you? Would you be able to prove your chops in spite of the negative signal of valuing yourself below market? (Of course, you are probably rare and won't have an effect on the overall market for developers, but I still think it's a fun thought experiment.)

Companies decide to make an before they pick a salary offer

The point of the article is that, assuming equal employees, you are in fact saying that one has a higher economic value to the company based only on where they choose to live.