It's completely accurate - hence the location part. If you sought to add clarification, the first sentence was unneccessary. Let's confine this to "they won't hire in most of the Continental United States". Even for exceptional candidates, remote is also completely out of the question for them. That's obviously their right and I don't hold them against them. (But it's worth contrasting with someone like Red Hat, who will hire someone from anywhere if they are awesome).

I have had lots of experience with Google and Amazon recruiters where CA was the only viable option. Google also tended to have a bad habit of offering SRE positions for datacenters in the sticks, but that was not a development-flavored SRE thing in the least. They pretty much close the door on you if you don't want to move and are dropping the ball on some pretty awesome development centers IMHO.

Facebook is often avoided by some very sharp kernel (and other) folks, because they greatly insist on a boot camp and can't guarantee what department you are going to work for. They lost some brilliant folks as a result. I wouldn't work for them for that reason, as I think the team and the manager are the most important parts of the hiring decision.

Yes, Google has other offices, but they are not hiring people in some pretty darn major development regions. There is allegeldy an office in Chapel Hill for instance, but it seems to be on the edge of being decomissioned and no recruiter will tell you anything about it.

So, yeah, it's not quite like you can just work anywhere.