Earlier quoted context omitted.
Company 1 wanted me for a remote position, but wanted to pay me about half my market rate. Is it possible to get anywhere close to a Silicon Valley salary on a remote position?
Sure, I always pay everybody the same (for a given position). I.e. paying for the job done, not for the needs. Else what do you take into account? "This person has no kids, so needs less cash." "This person has a vacation house; clearly need to cover those expenses". I always prefer local so if I'm hiring remote it's because of some skill I can't find locally. I want them to be a happy, productive employee, not to fe…
If you've filtered for basic competency where you can be sure you're not being BSed about their basic capabilities, I think I as a hiring manager would predict a slight correlation between better negotiating skills and better programming (and other) skills that I actually need them for. Often better negotiating is just asking for a higher-than-average price up front because you know you're worth it, because you know you're probably more skilled than the other person, and you know that in all likelihood you'll be contributing beyond the official bullet-points of your role -- i.e. your "given position" on paper is the same as the other person but you're doing a lot more.
Of course many places just need average skilled programmers, and if you can fill your roles with good enough people at a cheap price that's good business. But the general assumption that everyone implements the same Cog interface so they should get paid the same, while fair, is incorrect -- just like everyone has a different cost of living, I've never come across two identical devs nor two identical (except maybe on a short piece of paper leaving out a lot of details) dev positions. I think cutting out the possibility for negotiating better than others will also cut out the skilled-and-know-it batch from joining you unless they're super passionate about the product for some reason.