[aashay]

Not having to uproot the family is understandable, but if you're worried about the competitiveness of the market, know that there are a ton of jobs as well (ask anyone on HN about recruiter spam, which seems to serve as a proxy to this fact), which perhaps balances things. Six years of experience is non-trivial, I'm sure if you wanted to you could find something.

[cglace]

What would be your guess for the average salary in the valley of someone with 6-8 years of experience?

[textminer]

My suggestion is to avoid telling a potential new employer what you make now. They'd then work hard to cap you at current + 30% instead of what a comparably-skilled peer might make.

[encoderer]

Textminer is right, no need to mention your current wage.

But honestly, it seriously depends on what technologies you have experience with.

But to give you a number, you could very easily get $125k. I bet if you somehow got 100 offers, the vast majority of them would be normally distributed between $110 and $140k.

Mitigating factors: 1. The universe of companies willing to fly-in a candidate and pay for relocation is smaller, so you have less bargaining power. I was able to secure a 20% raise the first time I changed jobs here -- a year after relocating.

2. If you have impressive skills in more lucrative technologies you can certainly make more.

[cglace]

Interesting, that number is about the same as it is here in Atlanta but the cost of living is drastically lower.

[encoderer]

The average salary for a software engineer in ATL is 110-140k?

I talked to 2 companies in Atlanta in 2010ish (MailChimp and a smaller private company) and their salary ranges were well below that ($90-110k iirc). I'm surprised to hear it's so high!