[devonkim]

Virginia, DC, Maryland have similar cost of living but VA, MD, and DC have drastically different governments, tax rates, rights, and laws despite people working in roughly the same 40 square miles. Even a federal employee graduating and writing software should make more than that. Senior salaries are between $110k and $140k with not a lot of outliers on either end (the distribution matters more to me than a median when talking salary these days for white collar jobs).

California is a huge state and the Bay Area is going to have drastically different stats for even the same industry comparing San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Luis Obispo (yep, there's software jobs there too).