Generally speaking, CoL adjustments don't really make you whole. You may make more if you're in SF but housing is still going to take a significantly bigger chunk of your paycheck and you may or may not come out ahead at the end of the day.
Being on the periphery of a high cost area is probably the best deal. For most companies, for example, I imagine that Boston/Cambridge will be considered the same as Boston suburbs--even though within an hour drive you can get to vastly cheaper housing than in the city proper.
I wanted to add: If you live in SF and make $150k/yr and are able to put away 10% on investments that's $15k/yr. If you work somewhere else and take a move and make $75k/yr and are able to invest 20%, you haven't made a financial change. But a pay cut that big likely means you're somewhere that has less going on, less access to food, less for different types of activities, lower quality schools (that are funded less because property tax is lower), lower quality hospitals (big cities can afford all the fancy equipment and big time doctors), etc.
So to be honest, moving to a cheaper area with the exact same COL might not be better because of other factors involved.
Price, as it turns out, is a signal of value. Some of the value might be access to jobs which you may now be able to access from elsewhere, but certainly not all of it.
How many places in the United States have the immigrant communities of the Bay Area, for example? And how do you recreate such communities in cheap places without making them expensive?
> Generally speaking, CoL adjustments don't really make you whole.
Only if you don't live frugally, or if you aren't a senior engineer.
If you do, a lot of the high costs of a high-CoL area can be avoided.
If you are a senior engineer, that XY% raise over a junior is free money... Applied to a larger starting salary.
Oddly enough, high-CoL areas have the same, or higher % raises, when you are promoted, than low-CoL areas. In the mid-west, the wage difference between a senior and a junior may be $30,000. In the bay area, it can be $150,000. Your CoL doesn't go up just because you have a better job title.
It creates an incentive to establish legal domicile in a high-rent neighborhood and then always be somewhere else, "traveling", and taking care of all your business over the network.
So you can own/lease a broom closet or pied-a-terre in Expensiveton, maybe rent it out intermittently or to a "roommate", and actually work and sleep in Cheapsville.
If home address has an impact on take-home pay, it will be gamed just as hard as all the other metrics.
Being on the periphery of a high cost area is probably the best deal. For most companies, for example, I imagine that Boston/Cambridge will be considered the same as Boston suburbs--even though within an hour drive you can get to vastly cheaper housing than in the city proper.