I think this is generally true for average developers, but this probably doesn't apply for a senior engineer with 10 years of FAANG experience. They will be able to command a Silicon Valley salary anywhere in the world. But only if they work remotely for a SV company. You're probably not going to get this kind of salary if you work remotely for a company based in the UK, Canada, or Australia.
It's also true that many companies try to get away with cost-of-living adjustments, but you can find plenty of companies that don't do that. So they can just keep looking until they find a great offer.
If the SV companies are hiring remote employees now, that certainly changes things. I wouldn't put too much stock in the FAANG experience though, unless you luck into a company trying to make a prestige hire; they are competing directly with people with the same experience and skills, but earned in places where the wages are much less (say UK, Canada or Australia). I don't know the actual pay details, but we have had experienced people who have moved to us from FAANG and I'm confident they would have taken a pretty large pay cut assuming what I hear about the wages is true (but still happy, since it is generally tied to lifestyle changes and/or moving somewhere much cheaper to live). We employ a lot of remote Python and Go devs, and geographically we seem to have ended up with the most head count in New Zealand, Brazil, and the UK, despite the population advantage of the USA. Its remote work, so you can only afford to hire experienced staff because mentorship and training is so much harder.
> I wouldn't put too much stock in the FAANG experience though, unless you luck into a company trying to make a prestige hire; they are competing directly with people with the same experience and skills
But they don't have the same experience and skills. Are you suggesting that all workers with X years in X technology are interchangeable?
When you hire a remote employee for a full-time job, you're usually expecting them to put in at least 40 hours per week. People will often take that job because they value the stability, want to work with a good team, want to work on an interesting problem, or there are significant stock options at an early-stage startup.
When you're a contractor, you can earn a lot of money for short-term projects, but it gets a bit boring after a while. You're more of a mercenary with no long-term interest in the project. I've also found that the projects are usually very dull. If you join an existing project as a freelancer, then the code quality is often very poor and there can be a lot of technical debt. (YMMV.)
So sometimes it's nice to join a team and have a vested interest in the project, as a co-founder or an early employee. (I've been a freelancer working 10 hours per week for the last few years, but I'm now thinking about a full-time remote job at a startup.)
Consulting is fun, but if you're going to take it seriously (e.g. paying off the mortgage on a house and saving for retirement), then you have to put in a ton of hours over a few decades. That means working on a lot of really boring and tedious projects (and maybe a few interesting ones.) I'd much rather join some startups and get a few "lottery tickets", or build my own projects and support them with part-time consulting work.
While i have little experience on the remote side of things....i can assure you that working for The Man at an office in a conventional, non-remote way, also takes "a few decades" to pay of a mortgage, save for retirement, etc. ;-)
I dont think these companies are looking at N of hours at that point. They have a project and a timeline and budgeted to hire engineers that would deliver in that timeline.
At that point it's not about hours but the MVP they are able to deliver.
I've not had an employer concerned about the number of hours I work in a given period in a long, long time. They're concerned about productivity. Whether it takes me an hour each day or twelve hours each day, if project goals are being met and I'm making them money, they're happy.
It's also true that many companies try to get away with cost-of-living adjustments, but you can find plenty of companies that don't do that. So they can just keep looking until they find a great offer.