[gridspy]

If you want to stay in the bay area and leverage your experience, perhaps you want to become a technical co-founder for someone?

Otherwise it might make sense to move out of the bay area to where there are lower costs of living and then lower your salary expectations to match.

Bear in mind that being a good corporate drone or middle manager requires different soft skills and attitude than being the CEO of your own company. You have to march to someone else's drum which can be hard.

You need to prove to yourself and others that you can be a regular developer now, you're in a position where you might need to sacrifice salary, job description and/or working conditions to get a foot back on the ladder.

Beyond salary, the culture of working hours in the bay area might be a bad fit for you. If you're looking for a boring (in a good way) salaryman programmer role you might need to see where those sort of companies are centred.

Note, I live and work outside the US so I can't give specific US advice.

[silvercymbals]

I've considered this. But I really just want a real salary. If I could find this and make $120k in the bay (barely survivable) I'd consider it - but I would really prefer to have a normal job with a dependable salary.

I was previously in the bay, but I'm back in Austin for a while - which fortunately is dirt cheap.

[ProfessorLayton]

I’m sorry but this is wild, but you want:

- A salary that is ~15% higher than the median Bay Area household, which consists of ~2.6 people. And as an individual you’re calling it “barely survivable”.

or a

- A salary that is 40% higher than the median household in Austin TX, which consists of 2.7 people. The median individual makes about $52,223 in Austin.

Am I reading this right? On top of this you seem to have a negative and entitled attitude, based on your other responses.

[EstanislaoStan]

Hello from Fargo, ND! I make peanuts but it's the least stressful job I've ever had.

[burnt-resistor]

I'm an IC6 SRE and can't afford to live in the SF Bay Area where I grew up. The area around the 100th meridian west is much cheaper. The Bay Area has become a bastion of rich assholes from around the world gentrifying the cost of living and home prices, and old people with Prop 13 who never move while everyone else younger than them languishes paying much more property taxes. Boomers, on average, ruined the world with their selfishness and failed to pay it forward as the Greatest generation did for them.