[s_baby]

>Furthermore, there is a rash of jobs that are primarily cost-cutting measures from companies based out of more expensive areas, which puts you at a kind of career positioning disadvantage

Does/will the midwest not have this problem though?

>jobs seem to regularly pay under $100k for senior developers here when the cost of living has gone up dramatically compared to my perception that I could get a decent place for <$1500 / month where I wouldn't have to suffer from a horrible commute - this is patently untrue I've found after spending a month searching for housing (not apartments, admittedly).

You can rent a family home on the north perimeter for around $1700 a month. Not nearly as cheap as some midwest locations but not nearly as expensive as the Bay Area. You also do have the option of having a 40 minute commute and paying a fraction of that in rent. It's a nice option to have on the table especially if your job is located outside the city or allows remote days which is often the case.

[devonkim]

With my experiences with the F500s cutting IT costs, most onshore outsourcing was going directly to Texas and the Southeast for what appeared to be specific state-driven tax advantages - only with one or two sites did I see going somewhere like IN, OK, or KS usually due to existing assets there. Based upon more anecdotal info based upon Indeed results, in proportion to the population, there are potentially more and better software jobs as well as greater legacy of older-generation tech companies mentioned elsewhere in the thread from, say, Indiana and Ohio (Xerox). There's also healthcare companies in the midwest like CERNer that would result in some more (admittedly, IT primarily rather than software) tech jobs. Furthermore, Walmart seems to have a pretty solid number of technology jobs that aren't network and storage janitor work.

I never managed to find a house that was 3br/2ba+ in Brookhaven on up past the perimeter < $2000. It's a bit of a sticker shock for me in rent when the place I bought last year was about $1k / mo mortgage and comparably nice besides a bathroom's upgrades.