I do think it reflects more of a "not US" than a "not Silicon Valley/Seattle" problem these days. Anecdotally, I've discovered that most sufficiently large companies in the US now recognize and will credibly attempt to compete with the stratospheric Silicon Valley wages for the upper echelons of tech talent no matter where the company is located. For example, I've seen many cases of the Fortune 500, most of which are in inexpensive flyover metros in unsexy States (the US has ~55 metros with at least a million people), offering the upper end of the six-figure range for an individual contributor with exceptional skills. Seeing old, non-tech companies headquartered in Missouri or wherever doing this is a sea change.

For American software engineers, this is a brilliant change of condition. A decade ago, if you lived and wanted to work in the flyover metros, you were lucky to get six-figures at all no matter who you were or what you'd done. These days, big non-tech companies are willing to push toward a seven-figure comp package in flyover country for top tech people, in cities where almost no one makes six-figures. It has been really interesting to see.

"offering the upper end of the six-figure range for an individual contributor"

Really? Like 900,000 USD? Really?

I made the same assumption but I think maybe they meant higher end of typical six-figure salaries, as in ~$180-200k. 900k for an individual contributor who isnt a very very particular addition to a team seems a bit high...

Wow, that's good to hear. As someone who would like the option of settling down outside the Bay Area down the road, but wouldn't want to miss out on the opportunities available at top companies in the Bay Area, I'm curious how much and what kind of experience they're looking for in making these offers.

> offering the upper end of the six-figure range for an individual contributor with exceptional skills

how does one find companies with this sort of pay scale? (edit: maybe I misunderstood what you meant by "upper end")

>I do think it reflects more of a "not US" than a "not Silicon Valley/Seattle" problem these days.

Yeah, I agree, I've seen similar high offers in other US regions as well.

And as the US visa policies are becoming more strict, european companies won't have to compete against people leaving for the US, so the Salary/CoL ratio will stay bad over here.

"!valley problem"? Seattle and New York aren't in the "valley" and have the same compensation as the valley.

I guess we’re both in the same boat data wise. What Ive seen with my last set of searches is that the valley tops the list in terms of comp. If you take the next top 10 cities things drop off pretty quickly from there. Its not to say “no other place pays as much as SF”. Just on average the salaries are way off.

As someone that regularly deals with comp in all of these cities in the US and globally (unfortunately), there are a small number of cities, like Seattle, that literally go toe-to-toe with Silicon Valley on comp in practice. This was not always the case but it is in 2018. And in the case of Seattle, they don't have income tax either, which makes it brutal to suggest people relocate from Seattle. Hence why Seattle is the fastest growing city in the US.

There may be some areas where the Valley tops the comp list, the kind of software engineering that goes on in cities varies. But for many types of software engineering where Seattle excels, such as core infrastructure code, expected hiring costs are astronomically by any general metric.