Mid-tier cities give a lot of bang for your buck -- Salt Lake, Phoenix, the midwestern midsized cities (Cleveland, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Pittsburgh), Atlanta, etc. Even Portland compared to other coastal options.
And even in some of the "very expensive" housing markets, you can still find homes that are affordable relative to income within 40 minutes of downtown areas. Chicago and Boston both come to mind.
The primary differences, as far as I can tell, are that:
1) Niche senior positions are harder to find in cheaper cities (think "deep hard tech expertise"). For example, nearly all of the major corporate research labs in CS (MSR, Google Brain, Google Research, IBM Research, Oracle Labs, ...) are in or around expensive CoL areas. On the startup side, "hard tech" startups are very often more capital-intensive so are even more attracted to geographic VC bubbles.
2) Moving up within BigCos is sometimes more difficult if you're in a satellite office.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft don't have any sort of engineering presence in Utah. Though Adobe is majorly expanding here. And operationally, Facebook is adding a huge data center.
Cheap housing exists in areas of low-to-negative growth. As in, those who got out did and those who can get out will in order to find better jobs and a higher quality of life.
True, but unless you are a doctor, high wage jobs are few and far between in cheap cost of living areas. Perhaps, that's why they are cheap to live in. :)
1976 construction, 2000 sqft, 0.2 acre, 5 bed, 3 bath, 2 car garage, average condition, just under $200k.
Glassdoor average salary for "Software Engineer" (not Senior, etc.) in Salt Lake is currently $89k, 14% less than national average. [1]
Single-income house ownership is extremely common here.
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/salt-lake-city-software-e...