The problem with making decisions based on inaccurate facts is you can get very weird results.
There's really not much in the article based on actual data; it all seems to be meme stuff that "everyone knows" but google queries seem to oppose.
The main problem I've seen at companies that have "... ran out of talented devs that wanted to work in ..." stories is the labor pool is infinite IF the pay is there. As an example from the article, the median metro income in Milwaukee is $35K and in SF is $92K. And I found an infographic portraying the average software engineer pay in SF as $129K. Therefore HR needs to produce a salary for the new remote office employees and they run some simple math formulas and declare its financially irresponsible to pay a Milwaukee software developer more than 35/92*129 or $49K.
The problem is, again, via googling, the average software engineer on the ground right now in Milwaukee gets $68K.
Needless to say, if the locals will pay $68K and the remote coastal office will only pay $49K, the new remote office companies will never get an applicant who can even fizzbuzz much less provide value. I totally understand how the locals can produce world class software but remote offices "... ran out of talented devs ..." and decided they had to move back to SF and pay $129K again.
Its a youthful thinking mistake to think overly binary; either everyone gotta decentralize or everyone gotta centralize and either extreme tend to get owned in the competitive market by folks who compromise in the middle.
The main reason pay averages out more than people would think, is there is NO averaging of management demands for results. Its not like management is only going to demand 38% of the results and productivity from the new Milwaukee workers vs the SF workers regardless what they pay them.
There's really not much in the article based on actual data; it all seems to be meme stuff that "everyone knows" but google queries seem to oppose.
The main problem I've seen at companies that have "... ran out of talented devs that wanted to work in ..." stories is the labor pool is infinite IF the pay is there. As an example from the article, the median metro income in Milwaukee is $35K and in SF is $92K. And I found an infographic portraying the average software engineer pay in SF as $129K. Therefore HR needs to produce a salary for the new remote office employees and they run some simple math formulas and declare its financially irresponsible to pay a Milwaukee software developer more than 35/92*129 or $49K.
The problem is, again, via googling, the average software engineer on the ground right now in Milwaukee gets $68K.
Needless to say, if the locals will pay $68K and the remote coastal office will only pay $49K, the new remote office companies will never get an applicant who can even fizzbuzz much less provide value. I totally understand how the locals can produce world class software but remote offices "... ran out of talented devs ..." and decided they had to move back to SF and pay $129K again.
Its a youthful thinking mistake to think overly binary; either everyone gotta decentralize or everyone gotta centralize and either extreme tend to get owned in the competitive market by folks who compromise in the middle.
The main reason pay averages out more than people would think, is there is NO averaging of management demands for results. Its not like management is only going to demand 38% of the results and productivity from the new Milwaukee workers vs the SF workers regardless what they pay them.