You are actually proving my point. If there are 4.8 million developers who are not commanding Meta salaries, and they "pay well" it should be fairly straightforward to get labor.
It's simple: the more picky you are the more you will have to pay. The GP admitted the upper bound of Meta, which is a company that is sustainably operating in the same country. If you cannot compete in a labor market, either raise your product pricing or be more efficient. If not, you will make less profit and/or go out of business, which is an appropriate outcome most of the time.
I can’t believe that his work is so complicated that he can’t take a good older developer in thier 30s, who would be more than willing to move to a lower cost of living area where they can raise a family affordability and design an internal training program to get them up to speed.
Offer things that we care about like free health insurance, “unlimited PTO”, a generous 401K match with immediate vesting, etc.
I personally wouldn’t move to Alabama. But many would.
At 50, I need to work. But I don’t need to chase after FAANG salaries. I optimize for my other priorities. As I said in my previous post, I’m not “disdaining what I can’t have”. I’ve been there done that.
I totally agree with you, people thinking of moving there should be aware of the politics of the area.
But compared to a lot of the rest of Alabama and other stereotypes of the South, it's really a decent place. Definitely not the anti-science, anti-intellectual backwater many might assume. There's a lot of bright people there with interest in aerospace and engineering at all levels. And it's also a college town.
It's simple: the more picky you are the more you will have to pay. The GP admitted the upper bound of Meta, which is a company that is sustainably operating in the same country. If you cannot compete in a labor market, either raise your product pricing or be more efficient. If not, you will make less profit and/or go out of business, which is an appropriate outcome most of the time.
No one is entitled to their business model.