Whenever I look at cost of living comparison it doesn't seem advantageous to me to be in SV unless you get lucky on equity ( how do you even measure that? ).

$150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage.

Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats comparable to making $1m in the valley which is probably pretty rare.

What company in Dallas pays over $300k for engineers?

What sort of company pays engineers $300k in Dallas?

Oil and gas, and finance, to name two I’m familiar with.

Are that many SF tech workers making over 200 grand a year?

I hope so. If they aren’t then they would be better off finding work in some other part of the country.

Pretty sure that not too many. Some do, but again, most are capped at about 180k (that if with 7+ years of experience) For some stock options make a difference, but again, that is if you're lucky

The ones at the big tech companies and hot unicorns are.

The ones at your rando tech startup are not.

And yet, the housing market still makes buying prohibitive in that same region.