I guess if you were the kind of company that would hire remote software engineers, then you'd have very little reason to have the rest of your operation in expensive SF either, so there's a weird chicken-and-egg loop there.
There seems to be enough money sloshing around that you'd think someone would be arbitraging it successfully and employing rockstar programmers that live in cheap shacks around the country/globe, but apparently for the mainstream that's not considered viable.
This happens more than you think. There are plenty of ex-tech engineers who started their own contract dev companies with just a couple of local (SFBA) folks who run things and assign work to inexpensive programmers, designers, etc elsewhere in the country/world.
Typical current contract dev rate in the SFBA is in the $250/hr range (negotiable down to $150-175/hr for larger contracts).
I think thats it. 1/4 to 1/2 my day is pointless meetings. Some days its 100%. Every company has those odd people who just go to meetings all day (or so it seems). When they are not in a meeting they are sending slack/email about past and future meetings. I don't understand the appeal of those jobs. They are just black holes for productivity.
The only time I can concentrate for long periods (which is vital to programming) is if I stay late. I get more work done from 6PM to 8PM than I do all day. But then you have no life.
Even working from home is so much more productive. Remote work is great if you can find high paying gigs.
