[ones_and_zeros]

It's not about where you live. It's supply and demand. Those companies artificially limited their supply and provided a ton of demand within their narrow market. They are now opening up to new markets and spreading out the demand accordingly.

Forced analogy time: It's like if I decide I'll only buy peaches from the organic farm down the road. They charge $20/lb. I calculate that I get $21/lb worth of utility. The Farmer is happy.

A few years later I decide that purchasing organic peaches online for $15/lb fits the bill, and utility dropped slightly to $19/lb but still better in comparison. The farmer is no longer happy.

[aeternum]

The part that doesn't make sense though is keeping the employees that live in SF, or paying an employee more if they choose to relocate to SF.

Tech companies typically do increase your salary if you move to a higher CoL area.

[lotsofpulp]

>The part that doesn't make sense though is keeping the employees that live in SF, or paying an employee more if they choose to relocate to SF.

The buyer (Facebook) may not be playing all their cards. They may very well intend to reduce SF employee headcount, but want to experiment, and so saying otherwise will allow them to do it in a slow, controlled manner.

[Tade0]

Relocating for most people is actually a bigger deal than it may seem.

I personally have no problem with it and did just that at least once, but after returning I asked around and most if not all of my friends and family would not do the same even for - and this was especially shocking to me - 4x the salary.

Apparently flexibility is rare and sought after.

[Jare]

Lowering salaries all of a sudden for a large % of their workforce who are currently very productive, would be a bad move, destroy value instantly that would take long to recover. It makes sense to pay to keep that value, at least for a while, and let market dynamics slowly do their thing.