That is the case in the vast majority of tech companies, though. They (almost) all have something like a "regional adjustment", "location based" or other classification for salaries in different areas. Some are more extreme than others. The company I work for (it's a relatively well-known tech company) certainly has it, and I know Google and other FAANGs do, too.

I live in Kentucky, work for a FANG and my total comp is scaled to ~75% of what I made in the bay. It's worth it because my options here are limited.

A bay area worker may view this as exploitation, while I say "please god may this never end"

Ironically, the bay area worker is probably the one who's exploited by high taxation and greedy landlords.

Point is that when you interview in SF and then leverage remote work to go wherever you want they cannot police where you are and determine the appropriate salary.

OpenAI went shopping for Kenyan labor and those who did the job were not American and never interviewed in SF

This is more or less how it works, yes.

yes, that makes sense. there should be regional cost of living adjustments.

That is exactly how things are/should be working.

Salary is a result of market.

That's how it works. An engineer in the Bay Area can easily get 10 interviews next week and has to be paid more to stay.

Yes, that’s how it works in most industries…