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.