I think people with that mentality were unlikely to live in SV in the first place

There are plenty of folks, especially on the technical side, that are here for the interesting work and high salaries. They could care less about climbing the managerial ladder. Also, millennials are starting to hit the mid-career phase, where it becomes clear that the 'ladder' gets really narrow, and things like children and mortgages start to weigh heavily on life choices. There will be plenty of folks who stick around, for sure. But by all indications (surveys, anecdotal reports, rent prices, etc...), there is plenty of interest in remote work.

I think people with that mentality were unlikely to even get a job in SV. The ridiculous interview process alone should be a barrier enough.

That's not true. Many people go to big cities and SV because of the jobs. If they had a choice, they would prefer to live somewhere else.

I’m aware of that - as that was the reason I moved to the Bay Area as well. But I’ve been here a few years, I could get a job elsewhere without the leetcode interview. It just wouldn’t pay as well or have the same career growth track.

I don't care about career growth, but I do care about adding an extra 50k/year to my net worth for the same work with the same standard of living (or living in a crappy little hole-in-the-wall apartment and saving even more)

If I can make a competitive amount of money without living in California's armpit, I'm going to do it for sure

If WFH becomes the new norm for a company, the concept of HQ would become irrelevant, companies I know are planning to fill physical work space with hotel seats, then you should be able to grow career via WFH no problem.

There will be a group of people who prefer not to WFH... and they will be in the office and therefore be much more involved/at the forefront of the company.

As a team lead in a group distributed team, we make sure we include everybody regardless of physical location. You Zoom with people enough, and over time you realize there is nothing extra than the office provided except easy distractions.

I'm rarely on a call of any size where everyone would normally be in the same office or often even in the same country. In some ways, I actually prefer the situation where everyone is on their own video chat rather than having a mix of a couple conference rooms and everyone else by themselves.

A couple teams I know even have a standing rule about everyone calling in individually on team calls even if a few people are in the same office.

I think a lot of people come at this from the perspective of small companies where everyone is co-located. But the reality at large companies if people are pretty scattered around even if they're not working from home.

I don't know how anyone can say that video calls and face-to-face time are equivalent with a straight face.

Of course, this is my opinion, but it seems pretty obvious that in-person interaction is what builds relationships.

Because we have statistics to prove it. The productivity of our whole eng organization has been great while being 100% remote. As a caveat to this, before the pandemic only half of us went to the office. I believe that helped us be prepared.

Also, haven’t you ever made friends online? Building relationships online is nothing new. In fact, many of the in person relationship building activities excluded different individuals. For example, going out for drinks with the team was never my idea of having fun. I am glad I don’t have to attend those anymore.

lol, care to share what kind of statistics you are looking at?