[oihoaihsfoiahsf]

It's not pointless from the perspective of any given engineer. If a given engineer is willing to accept a lower relative quality of life in the Bay Area, the absolute amount they save as a result of that decision is larger at a larger absolute salary. This is relevant as long as the probability of living outside the Bay Area in the future is greater than zero.

[closeparen]

Commute for hours every day and live in crappy shared housing for a couple decades so that eventually you can walk away from all your friends and colleagues and start over somewhere worse.

Seems like a pretty obtuse way of obtaining a Midwestern house. You could also just mortgage one, like everyone else does, while working any white-collar Midwestern job.

[oihoaihsfoiahsf]

You think all or even most of your friends and colleagues are still going to live in the Bay Area in a few decades? :( Sorry, that ain't gonna happen. And it doesn't take decades to save up enough money to be financially independent elsewhere if you're getting paid in the Bay.

[tspike]

Which, of course, cascades into an even worse problem in the areas where the Bay Area people flood into.

"Relatively affordable" to people coming from the Bay Area translates to "completely out of the question" for people who are from the areas affected.

[oihoaihsfoiahsf]

This might be a problem for one or two of the top areas, but there are not enough Bay Area emigres to materially move the needle in the vast majority of non-Bay Area localities.

[tristor]

Try "tens to twenties of 'top areas'". Just look at the housing market in any other city in the US that's started to build a tech hub. Austin, TX in particular is a good example where the average cost of a decent house has basically doubled in the last 10 years.

[oihoaihsfoiahsf]

I don't think you're going to be able to attribute that to Bay Area compensation. Urbanization in general: yes. Bay Area? No.

[burlesona]

This is what has happened in Austin and Portland, just to name two. As another commenter said it isn’t enough to affect every market but I think it affects many markets, and there is a domino effect as people cash out of those second level cities and move into third level, etc.