Let me bring front and center something that has gotten a surprisingly (to me) small portion of this discussion:<p>ENABLE MORE REMOTE WORK.  Why am I living in a high cost area?  Because this is where the jobs are.  Why are costs high?  Because thousands of other engineers essentially _need_ to do the same thing.<p>So to answer Sam&#x27;s original question with another question, in addition to merely making this a one sided &quot;businesses must be more accommodating&quot;;  What can engineers do to increase remote worker availability for startups? (Companies in general, but inverted Sam&#x27;s wording for more poetic &quot;fit&quot;)  What pain point solvers, major technologies, processes, etc are missing that would make truly distributed teams less of a risk, or more desirable?  While I certainly think there are already great reasons (you get access to more talent potentially lower cost, more &quot;diversity&quot; out of box, more flexibility from your workforce and less overhead per employee) I&#x27;d be curious to hear how this dovetails with what the powers that be think are missing.<p>(In the case that one thinks there are intractable problems re: remote, I&#x27;d also be curious to hear those for the purpose of confronting this problem regardless.)