[arachnids]

The point is just that if a company wants to participate in a labor market, it has to pay at the going rate in that market. For various reasons, a company might choose to stay in a pricy market. For example, it might be easier to hire for some skillset, or it might be easier to grow your team because your employees have lots of friends with similar skills that they can refer.

Companies that don't think this is an advantage should do what you're recommending, but the ones that do will continue to hire here, while also hiring in other markets. I don't know which group is more correct (it's pretty hard to make any authoritative claims about these things), but that does explain why there isn't a mass exodus from SF to ATL.

A point to note here is that labor markets vary not just by location, but also by what the job is. Many companies in the Bay Area do outsource some parts of their internal IT or Business Intel functions to Accenture and co, for example. What they're doing is exactly that - they're leaving this expensive market because they don't believe the benefits are worth the markup for those specific roles