| Another perspective: What you get as a developer in the bay area is way better than other US cities. I've lived in a couple of those places over the course of a decade and a half, and I can tell you that while the cost of living is lower there, so also is the pay. Significantly lower. You figure in the relative scarcity of jobs, and you're looking at making a lot less, limited carrier mobility, and real stress when layoffs invariably roll around. Sure, I can't buy a house here, but I certainly make a lot more than I spend and I stock that extra away. This creates something many people don't have: options. Options like: Being picky about jobs.
Starting something on your own.
Buying a house with cash somewhere else if you decide to move. These are hard to replace outside of this bubble many of us live in. |
But when I poke at other markets, with very few exceptions the pay differential for web developers is so steep and the choices are so few it's startling. (And I'm also frequently reminded how much of the rest of the United States is still populated by Microsoft shops rather than living in OSX/Unix-land like I do.) This is why I ended up moving out here in the first place a decade ago from the Tampa Bay area -- I was a Unix-head in a land of very few opportunities, and to my dismay, that really hasn't changed very much.
It's hard not to notice that a lot of the HN crowd that takes mobility for granted are people who co-founded their own startups and/or work at companies with a strong telecommuting culture. I think that's awesome, but finding such roles is not as easy -- even out here -- as I think people who've found them sometimes believe. (And I say that as someone who's primarily worked from home since 2011.)