That seems obvious to me: lowering your cost of living means you are willing to accept $X-1, or if you personally don't want to another person that also moved out of high priced living area may accept a lower salary (so they get your job). Otherwise why did companies even have different compensation tiers for same type of work across US regions?

Just because it takes some time for the market to price the changes it doesn't mean it won't do that. Enjoy the initial boost in discretionary income but prepare for having to negotiate lower compensation down the line (or, more likely, not getting any increase in compensation for a long time).

True, also there is now a bigger talent pool to choose from, since you don't need to worry about finding candidates willing to relocate, that means more employees to choose from.

Ok - This is fair - as you make it easier to work from other places, you increase employee supply. That resets the balance. Good points.

Yes I think the increase in employee supply outstrips the rise in remote jobs becoming viable.

I know a know a TON of people looking forward to the next couple of years employment opportunities. lots of people I know have gotten offers from SV, seattle, etc companies but refused to relocate for one reason or another. now that people are accepting of full remote, they have their eyes open for the jobs they want, with the hope that full remote is now an option. I myself turned down many offers from west coast corps because pay wasn't high enough to justify moving and the life style cost and inconveniences increase.

Even if it was obvious to you, I think discussions work better when people don’t have to guess what someone’s explanation is.

That is the whole point of information asymmetry in negotiation. The party with more information has an advantage. All salary discussions are negotiations.

I was referring to clarity about what one's argument is on HN, not information on a job search.

Clearly the buyer (employer) thinks the seller (employee) will have no choice but to accept lower pay due to the seller having a lack of buyers willing to pay more.

If the buyer's prediction is true, then the seller will accept (maybe not in individual cases, but averaged over entire workforce). If the buyer's prediction is false, then sellers will opt to sell to other buyers offering more.

When there are 100 jobs and only 10 qualified people in SF ,all paying huge cost of living, they can command very high salaries to cover COL plus more.

When there are 10 Million people living in dramatically cheaper COL centers they (a) can survive on much less, and (b) are all competing for 100 jobs, driving the supply curve way down.

>> restatement of economic generalities help

because this is a textbook example of why these generalities hold true, but only in really basic, aggregate cases.

I think that's just a question that people look at backwards. From a company's perspective, salaries outside the SF Bay Area are the "right" ones - they think they're moving closer to the world where location doesn't matter, not further away.

Its not the location, is the competition pool. When you become remote, you now increase the competition by a lot of people that also want to work remote, if not half the world.

Its very imprecise to base salary on location, but if remote were just as competitive as in-office, you wouldn't hear people asking to get paid the same when they go remote

Because in a world where many jobs are not remote, especially over the longer-term, on average local job options will tend to influence the salaries of people working remotely from that location.