Not exactly. The complaint was people who want big money and don't create a lot of value. The ones who want $130K and you ask them why page loading is so slow and they tell you its because the bubble sort they run on every update takes forever. They create negative value.
Then companies better start paying more. This is how supply and demand works. If $130k only gets you incompetents, then it's time to start offering $200k, or whatever the magic number is.
Remember: Any time you hear an employer whining about "lack of qualified candidates" be sure to mentally append "...at the rate we want to pay."
But if the cost of an employee is > their value, you get massive off-shoring. That's the danger, and as an Australian the opportunity, of Bay Area pricing being so crazy.
If the Bay Area wants to keep its advantage - in a world where Alibaba is the lead IPO of the last 5 years - it needs to remain competitive in all ways.
No need to 'off-shore'. Presumably companies in the Bay area could start (or grow) branch offices in other places in the US that don't have such a high cost of living.
It may be that the cost to attract talent to the Bay area is now too high for all but the most profitable businesses. I have no idea if this is true or not but conceptually the giant payrolls needed may finally be overwhelming the benefits of locating a company in the area.
The complaint "I can't differentiate competent applicants from incompetent ones" is a very different one than "I'm not getting any competent applicants". Offering a higher salary incentivizes more competent applicants to apply.
