Now I’d like a place where houses are affordable, and jobs are plentiful. Have we found a place like that yet?

You might be surprised if you don't require living in a highly walkable downtown core. In many places, such as Eastern Massachusetts, the jobs are pretty distributed around the area; it's only fairly recently that tech jobs have started to be located in the city at all. And you get an hour outside of Boston and there's quite a bit of housing in the $300-$400K range in many towns. That's not Midwest cheap but it's not $1.5M for a teardown either.

Of course, Cambridge and many areas of Boston proper are quite expensive (as are some of the tonier suburbs like Concord).

Silicon Valley is a bit unusual in that you can't really escape from high prices, in spite of being suburban sprawl, because of the geographical constraints.

I would have said the area I live was that a year ago. We saw the most job growth and lowest unemployment in the country, all while my house was likely worth no more than $150,000.

But the most job growth in the country requires that people move there (here) and they require houses when they arrive. With that surprising increase in demand, I expect I could get $250,000 for my house now, which is a staggering increase in a fairly short period of time.

On the other hand, if you're coming from a place where houses are selling for $1,200,000 (the 4 * $300,000 suggested above), then maybe you still see $250,000 as being affordable. We certainly have jobs. Every place of business in the area seems to be hiring.