Before anyone says "Why limit yourself to San Francisco?", they weren't looking for a remote employee.
I understand the benefits of having a fully co-located team, however in this article they did not address fulltime remote employees.
I currently work as a fulltime remote employee for a startup with a similar team size, and we are able to iterate rapidly on product.
It's not like they are hiring people straight out of Stanford. They're getting people from bootcamps!
I've worked on remote engineering teams for companies that have their non-engineering workforce go to an office for the last 6 years.
There's tradeoffs. Remote is much better for some things and in the same physical office everyday is much better for certain things.
There's a ton of blog posts that have been on HN over the years that go into the details of the pro and cons.
But anyone telling you it better one way or another in general is full of it. All depends on the details.