In context - $140K for an experienced software engineer in a major metropolitan city isn't outrageous. A "software architect" often does hands on coding. For reference:

https://www.matrixres.com/resources/salary-survey/

If I can make $140K in metro Atlanta, where a newly built 3000 square foot house can be had for less than $350K in a nice neighborhood, why would I want to live in Seattle?

So not sure what you define as experienced (2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?) but a 5 years of experience SDE at Amazon may make that in salary, but their total compensation will be quite a bit more than that.

If you hang on through your last 2 years of vesting (which is notoriously painful).

Don't fret, there's a good chance HQ2 comes to Atlanta and hikes those home prices. In fact, if I lived there, I'd probably make sure to buy ahead of time

There are plenty areas of metro Atlanta where the house prices are much lower than $335K for a nice size house. I purposefully chose the most affluent county in Atlanta (and one of the top 25 in the US) for comparison.

"Metro Atlanta" consists of either 5 counties or 10 depending on which definition you go by. There is so much sprawl in Atlanta and so much undeveloped land that builders will jump at the chance to build. This is still the South. The government doesn't make builders jump through as many hoops to build.

Politics. Nicer weather. Better environment for women/girls in schools. :)

The weather point is, of course, tough. Seattle summers are bloody amazing. The winter sorta blows.

>Politics

Says nobody that's been to Atlanta or has taken two minutes to use the internet to check preconceived notions about Georgia against the city.

https://www.myajc.com/atlanta-neighborhood-2016-presidential...

Apologies for not responding. I actually forgot I posted this. :(

Lived in Atlanta for many years. It is much more liberal than surrounding areas, true. However, Seattle is in another league when it comes to this sort of thing.

Which is not to say that we don't have a ways to go, either. In particular, we have some really hard problems to consider out here.

Politics isn't just local laws but also state laws.

Which state laws affect individuals more than they would n liberal states? Atlanta being such a major city makes GA very pro business. Businesses are doing a lot to keep pressure on the state to keep it from becoming more conservative.

Laws about abortions, bathrooms, access to the social net, etc.

The weather in Atlanta isn't much better than Seattle, if you compare season to season.

Seattle has one bad season, one good season. Atlanta is the same.

The weather in Atlanta is just more extreme, honestly. Which can matter a lot if you like hot weather. Out here in Seattle it is almost always cooler. Hardly ever actually "cold" though, in that I think Atlanta actually got more snow and I had my pipes freeze more there than I have out here.

Now, the winter is much darker. The shift in sunset and sunrise is much more pronounced. This is somewhat offset by how much bloody sun we get in the summer. Which is truly insane. Sun is up by 4:30 most mornings, and you can see outside till near 10 most evenings. (Sunset, I think, is well earlier than that, but our twilight is bright. I am likely mistaken on this understanding, though. Haven't taken a journal or kept records, etc.)

It is overcast 8-9 months of the year in Seattle.

Yeah, exactly. Amazon pays less than Google and FB, but it is vastly more than your average SF startup, for example.