Harsh remote pay disparity was much more common ~5 years ago, but in my experience it's significantly better these days.
There's definitely a large swath of companies that try to use remote workers to lower costs, and there's usually some hit to package size, but the serious companies make extremely worthwhile offers.
Two anecdotal data points:
I work semi-remote for a non-FAANG enterprise company and my comp is bay area level. I'm in Seattle, which helps negotiation, but my colleagues in rural areas have a quality of life that suggests competitive compensation even in middle america.
A friend in rural NY got a remote job that was within 10k of his bay area salary. ~120K for a non-engineer at a company with ~13M series A.
There's definitely a large swath of companies that try to use remote workers to lower costs, and there's usually some hit to package size, but the serious companies make extremely worthwhile offers.
Two anecdotal data points:
I work semi-remote for a non-FAANG enterprise company and my comp is bay area level. I'm in Seattle, which helps negotiation, but my colleagues in rural areas have a quality of life that suggests competitive compensation even in middle america.
A friend in rural NY got a remote job that was within 10k of his bay area salary. ~120K for a non-engineer at a company with ~13M series A.