Also, if you relocate from Mountain View, I suspect you'd be able to keep more of your salary than the cost-of-living decrease would strictly dictate.
Re:The Programmer Salary Taboo
by mikebabineau on Tuesday April 12, 2011 @07:01PM
(#2439781)
These savings can only come after the cost-of-living overhead. It's important to note that average salary does not scale 1:1 with cost of living.
Depending on your finances, a 20% bump in pay with a 40% increase in cost of living may lower your discretionary income.
For some, this is offset because overhead does not scale 1:1 with salary: living in a high-cost area provides a greater discretionary income advantage to those with high incomes than for those with modest incomes.
But given two roughly equal-valued salaries, I think the higher absolute salary is still superior. Savings, for instance, don't scale with cost of living; saving 20% of $100,000 is much different from saving 25% of $40,000.