[mdorazio]

Pre or post-tax, and at what standard of living? Weather aside, you can get significantly better housing/schools/daycare/whatever for that 80k elsewhere than you can for 160k in the Bay Area. If you're young and single this is probably a non-factor, but for people >30 it can be significant.

[kobeya]

If you're young and single or dual income, no kids, the bay area is a fantastic place to make high income and save tons of money. Lots of people in r/financialindependence are tech workers in the valley.

If you're starting your own company and want VC investment, I can think of no better place to be than silicon valley, assuming you make use of the social events, meetups, attend YC demo days, rainbow mansion, etc. The personal networking will lead to more and better deals.

But if you have kids, a spouse that doesn't pull in the astronomical salaries, or are trying to bootstrap a company, stay far, far away.

[mahyarm]

Very true on the having kids part. But you typically have 7 years of your life before you reach 30.

Probably contributes to the logan's run effect you see in SV tech companies ;)

What I've seen from colleagues with kids is the spouse also works some sort of 6 figure job and they either commute a lot or bought a house before it got extra crazy. Like one who bought a $600-700k TIC around the Haight ~4 years ago. Or they sacrifice their living standard somehow. The current family set you see today bought when it was more affordable.

[mdorazio]

Good points on how families in the Bay Area are setup today or established themselves a few years ago. To be fair, though, you have 37 years of employment after you reach 30... It's kind of scary to think about the Bay Area being a good place to establish yourself for only 15% of your career. Logan's Run effect indeed.

[mercutio2]

Good developers can make way, way more than 160k total comp without much effort in the Bay Area. Not at startups, so if you want to earn lots of money, don’t join a startup.

You have to be good, and work hard, but I know lots and lots and lots of tech workers who are single earners with kids and a house they didn’t buy before the boom.

[mahyarm]

I agree, but people would of started coming out of the woodwork and giving me even more exceptions to the rule and how it's unrealistic, so I did the startup lower bound.