[avenoir]

I don't think anything in Denver or Boulder stacks up to astronomical prices of the Bay Area. You can easily get a nice house 20 minutes from Denver for $300K. If you're looking in Denver proper, you're looking at $500K-$1M+ (Cherry Creek or similar). But you get much much more bang for your buck (we're talking a nice house). A $1M property in SF is like, what, some land with a dilapidated property? Boulder's housing market is going to be significantly more expensive. I'm only familiar with rent prices there. Maybe somebody else can comment on the housing market. But again, I don't think it's anywhere close to the Bay Area prices. At least not in terms of what you get for the same money.

Boulder has more tech jobs. There are big guys like Twitter, Google and a gazillion of startups like VictorOps and SendGrid. Denver's lacking but I don't think it's too far behind. The fun stuff is pretty much all in Boulder though. Maybe the current construction boom will change that a bit.

I can't comment on salaries. I work remotely for a company that isn't in Denver, but I can just say you can live lavishly here if you make $120K+. And if you have some money to burn, it's a perfect time to invest in some property. The entire Denver area is under construction right now.