In a world where no companies scale pay based on employee location: - It's rare that employees in expensive areas do not get to work remotely - because there w

In a world where no companies scale pay based on employee location: - It's rare that employees in expensive areas do not get to work remotely - because there would almost always be someone of similar skill in a cheaper location to hire - It's rare that a company that has in-office workers in an expensive area would hire someone working remotely - because they are certainly paying the local workers more than what would be considered normal for a remote worker... because those local people need to earn more to have the same quality of life. And if they hired the remote worker for that "normal remote rate", they would need to cut the pay of their local workers (otherwise they _are_ scaling pay based on location). _(Note that certain "this is one of only a few people in the world that meet our criteria" situations would not follow the above)_ So it seems like either - This world does not have in-office worker in expensive areas, or - All areas have the same cost of living, or - There is a hard split between companies that hire remote workers and those that do not.