Comment by bnchrch

I can share my experience as a canadian who's been working remotely for US companies since 2016.

Typically I would either find a warm intro from a past colleague, or I would specifically find someone involved in the hiring pipeline at the company on Linkedin and say "Hey im so and so, and blah blah blah, im thinking of applying but would love if you could tell me more about the role and the culture before I commit"

From here, so long as you baseline can stand out as a solid engineer and communicator those US only barriers fall down.

This is why to someone elses point > if they’d hire you, why wouldn’t they hire someone much cheaper.

They'd hire someone cheaper certainly, provided they could find a person with identical quality, similar culture, and near PST timezones. Which is a fairly tall order in reality.

Its also why its not too uncommon to find Canadians pulling in near SF salaries while not having to relocate