> You're not understanding the demand side. I think I am understanding it, but you are merely repeating your points without addressing the economics that I am

> You're not understanding the demand side. I think I am understanding it, but you are merely repeating your points without addressing the economics that I am pointing out. > Indeed there is. It shows that the value gained by the employer is at least that of $200k+. Yes and so the value you generate for the employee puts an upper bar on what salary you can command, not a lower bar, which is what you seem to be implying. > Not only does a an employee's location not change the employers' demand, the moving also does not change the supply available to employer. It increases the supply available, because today, given the investments Google has made in setting up offices for ~30000 employees in the bay area, they have to fill that demand using employees located in the bay area. They don't have to do that if they can hire from anywhere, so the supply increases. > Moving or not, the employer could always find a new employee abroad if supply was indeed plentiful. And they do! Google has employees around the world, and surprise, they do not get paid as much as they would have gotten paid in the Bay Area. Why is a Google engineer in Bengaluru who is hired by the same hiring process paid 1/3rd of what they'd get paid in MTV? And to preempt the usual HN racism against the quality of Indian engineer, the same Google engineer would be paid the MTV salary if they moved to MTV. This is not a hypothetical, this is literally what happens to the countless Google engineers who transfer from BLR to MTV. Based on your logic, why is that engineer NOT paid the MTV salary today in BLR? ———— I mean I am not even making a far-fetched claim. Bay area salaries are the highest in the world. They have to move down towards the average if some other salaries are going to rise because the engineer who lives in Randomville Alabama didn't have a Google office he could commute to and hence wasn't in the supply pool, but now is, can now compete for the Google job.