It's not really controversial, but just a kind of sad state-of-the-world type thing imho. While there are undoubtedly a lot of talented developers in SF, "SF sa

It's not really controversial, but just a kind of sad state-of-the-world type thing imho. While there are undoubtedly a lot of talented developers in SF, "SF salary" doesn't really equate with talent and it's mostly there due to the uber expensive nature of the place and US economy expectations afaik. For example, I'm pretty sure there are a ton of developers all around the world that are much more talented and hard working that a lot of people getting paid "SF salaries" in SF and that are paid but a small percentage of even an average "SF salary" OP is right because the differences can be so abysmal that even just 1 month of "SF Salary" can be much greater that 1+ years of salary in other countries for basically the same job. So it would be an obvious choice that if companies can get a remote developer that's just as productive for 20k/year it would make no sense to pay >120k..150k/year (which seems to be the average for a software engineer according to payscale).