This trend was fully present pre covid, especially in the high cost areas. If your task requires “programmers”, there’s lots of them and companies seek the low

This trend was fully present pre covid, especially in the high cost areas. If your task requires “programmers”, there’s lots of them and companies seek the lowest cost. If, rather, you have a task that requires “top-notch” or speciality programmers, there’s far fewer of them to choose from. Before, companies needed to find them, then convince them to relocate and deal with the immigration hassles associated with relocation. This was tedious and companies hire companies to do this. If these people are not required to relocate, the size of the hiring pool increases to include multi-professional families or those with strong geographic preferences. I guess this can be rephrased to: if programmers are a commodity, work will flow to the lowest cost area possible. If it’s anti-commodity/bespoke work, one must gather the craftspeople one needs. And these people know they’re valuable which makes the negotiation more even.