> But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries from everywhere.
You can't. Spotify are an exception and I doubt that they'll keep this up long term or that many companies will follow.
And I think that that people overestimate these effects in general - the most likely outcome is that the salary distribution gets smoothed over to some extent i.e. big-city salaries go down a bit (or don't rise as high and as fast), remote and lower-cost areas see some increase in salaries but to a limited extent. But at the end of the day SV and big cities will still offer the best compensation, just with a smaller delta between them and the rest of the market.
To the degree that true remote becomes more prevalent (a lot of people will be more in the 1-2 days/week commute camp), you probably see a new equilibrium over time as you say. Even if companies are hesitant to actually cut salaries, given how contentious that is, new hire offers in high CoL areas start coming in a bit lower and raises get skinnier while offers to people living in Little Rock are very generous for the area. You still have disparities but there's more of a nationwide equilibrium.
You can't. Spotify are an exception and I doubt that they'll keep this up long term or that many companies will follow.
And I think that that people overestimate these effects in general - the most likely outcome is that the salary distribution gets smoothed over to some extent i.e. big-city salaries go down a bit (or don't rise as high and as fast), remote and lower-cost areas see some increase in salaries but to a limited extent. But at the end of the day SV and big cities will still offer the best compensation, just with a smaller delta between them and the rest of the market.