With huge cost of living to go along with it

You can save a lot more money, in absolute dollar terms. 20% of 200k is more than 40% of 80k.

People talk about "cost-of-living" like it's some non-negotiable tax that you have to pay to the world. It's true you can't get the same lifestyle at the same price as a low CoL area - no humongous 5 bedroom house with a massive backyard. But it doesn't mean your life has to necessarily suck.

You can get the 5 bedroom house 15 minutes away from a decent city, 15 minutes away from work, in most states, and not miss out on much from the SV "lifestyle".

I think the only thing I miss out on by not working in SV is working with true world-class talent.

Who said anything about the SV lifestyle? I was only talking about the high salaries in SV and the financial opportunities resulting from them.

What I meant was you can't have the same lifestyle in SV as you would in a low CoL area - no humongous house etc. You'd have to adapt and especially downsize on living space. But if you're OK doing that the financial rewards are large.

Financial rewards? Like $2 Million for a house that costs 200k in the rest of the country? What savings!

SV is fine if you never want to buy a home, start a family, live without roomates etc..

Sometimes these huge companies have offices in some not-so-huge areas with excellent cost of living. (e.g. Lehi, UT)

Interesting that you mention Lehi. I’m going exploring this summer to see if I can open a satellite office there for customer service, sales & maybe some engineering too. At a 2 hour flight, it’s a pretty awesome place. I’ve hung out with a YC startup there and there’s good energy & drive with a reasonable cost of living.

However, I know things look good on paper and don’t always pan out that way once you’re actually there.

One of the things about SV is that I don’t fee quite so out of place and weird for wanting to work all the time.

The surrounding areas have houses for much less. Lehi used to be a big farm town, and now there's a huge dichotomy between the old and the new. Traffic is getting worse (Utah standards of "worse", of course). A 20 minute commute, however, provides much more affordable housing.

If cost of living scales linearly with salary the only situation where you prefer to be in cheapotown is if you're spending more than you earn.