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.

So to answer Sam's original question with another question, in addition to merely making this a one sided "businesses must be more accommodating"; What can engineers do to increase remote worker availability for startups? (Companies in general, but inverted Sam's wording for more poetic "fit") 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 "diversity" out of box, more flexibility from your workforce and less overhead per employee) I'd be curious to hear how this dovetails with what the powers that be think are missing.

(In the case that one thinks there are intractable problems re: remote, I'd also be curious to hear those for the purpose of confronting this problem regardless.)