[s73v3r]

"Choosing to work in a locale where a median home price is a million dollars is a luxury. Engineers could pick from other metro areas, and get fairly close to $100K/year with much lower costs of living (Austin, Dallas, Durham come to mind, there are many more)."

And have their potential job prospects cut in half or worse.

[devonkim]

I haven't heard of many $100k+ software jobs in Durham. It's almost all RedHat, that one small MS office, and Ansibleworks I would imagine that make up much of the ones north of that I'd imagine. I worked with a team in Cary and I got the impression that they were paid less than us in the Seattle area for sure for comparable experience.

[toomuchtodo]

What good is a job when you need $100-150K/year to lead a middle class life in SF?

[ryandrake]

The point is that they are plentiful in SF and Silicon Valley, and that reduces risk. When you lose your job in the Bay Area, you walk across the street, resume in hand, and lo and behold there's another tech employer. When you lose your job in, say, rural Florida, you have to move or take up bartending to survive.

I'd love to move back east, and would in a heartbeat, but I'd have to settle for a single digit number of local employers, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. The fact that houses are $1MM+ here in the Bay Area is the price I pay for a bit of employment security.