[shmel]

If you only care about money, sure. I have plenty of friends working in FAANG. For some mysterious reason any time I ask them about work, they say something along the lines "ehh... it's fiiiine. Paycheck is pretty good though". Okay, not all, but perhaps 95%. And half of them work massive overtime on regular basis. I can get behind working weekends when you hope to change the world. They often say things like: "yeah, I have to work 60-70h per week because I don't want my boss to yell at me". Those who work normal hours say: "there is not much work to do really, we literally have meetings about meetings to fill the day. I wish I had some real work to do". I truly hope that higher TC compensates for that.

[closeparen]

The Bay Area housing market is too competitive for this. If you’re renting a room in your early 20s then sure just have fun, any tech job should cover it. If you want to own a place to raise a family in by your 30s, and you don’t have some exogenous source of wealth, you’re going to need every dollar of liquid compensation you can possibly get.

[shmel]

Or you can just live somewhere else. The world doesn't end at Bay Area.

[closeparen]

Sure but this thread is about technology startups. The jobs you can get anywhere are business IT departments.