Damn. I live in Poland and pay around 500USD for a comfy apartment in one of the best neighbourhoods in the city, close to nice parks and to every store you need. I definitely recommend making the move if you are willing to learn Polish (not needed at all for a job in IT, but useful if you want to live here long term). Worst case scenario you can always move back. That's what I was thinking when I moved, but in the end I decided to stay.

The best hack is to move to SF, get a Bay Area comp package at a remote friendly tech co, then make the case to go remote when you’ve developed enough trust within the org.

You can find that too in the US, just not in major coastal metros.

Can you? I would have thought that most US cities are either too small or too expensive for that. Or are you talking about the amount of rent specifically?

The USA is a huge place where cities are sometimes spread among vast distances, that has lead to creation of extensive urban centers like you described that are somewhat distant and thus cheap. You can find dozens of cities like that, but of course, the wage is also considerably lower. There is a phenomenon of US digital nomads - people who work remotely but move only across the USA, instead of going to e.g. Asia.

Currently living in a lively midwest town, 10 minutes walk from downtown and three separate centers of attraction. 500/month. It's possible.

It is a lot. Especially considering the tech industry salary is under $90k for a sr engineer, and a normal professional person probably makes $40k-$60k/yr

Ok got it. For a 1-bedroom in any western US metro (Seattle, SF, LA) that would be well below market.

I live in Seattle, and no it wouldn't.

I don't think so.

sf is known for being in the top 5 most expensive cities in occident. sorry to ask, are you really they ignorant of the world outside of the bubble 1 meter around you.