For programmers in Indianapolis, there's numerous opportunities. Salesforce has helped advance the salary curve.

Job interviews are pretty straightforward. Nothing like the FAANG grind. Salaries are $80K fresh out of college. Surpassing $200k is doable at places like Salesforce, Eli Lilly, etc..

Lots of "routine" programming jobs are in the $100-$140k range going from Senior to Staff. Higher levels of IC and management of course go up from there.

A nice house costs $200k.

> Salaries are $80K fresh out of college.

I think this is changing (for the higher) in some low cost of living areas (although I can't speak for the midwest) as tech talent moves out of SF. My good friend just got a $120k offer for a pretty "routine" new grad job.

e: for clarity

what location and what company (if you can share?) Most ranges I've seen around this parts are 80-120k and upwards of 140-150 for senior talent.

Y'know - a bit of a brain fart on my part, because I forgot we were discussing the midwest in particular and not low cost of living in general.

This was an offer in North Carolina for a testing role, but I'd rather not share the company without asking her.

The problem is the compensation ceiling in these cities. It’s not the Midwest, but when I was searching in Atlanta for tech jobs to stay closer to family, the upper limit was about $150k, which I think was at Square. There are other non-tech companies that offer SWE positions (The Home Depot, Warner Media), but you will always be treated as a cost center and the career growth is limited.

Meanwhile, SWE comp at FANG can end up closer to $350k for senior engineers and $600k for staff positions. With a lot of these companies now offering permanent remote work, even a 50% pay cut is better than the local offerings.

FAANG is currently pretending that the high-pay given to high-quality Bay area engineers is due to the cost-of-living.

I think once remote work really starts in full swing, we'll see wages in remote regions rise as companies realize that they are essentially negotiating with the same people, who still expect to be paid highly for their work.

I think you'd sooner see wages fall than rise. People are working those salaries in cheap areas because they couldn't get a higher salary elsewhere, after all. There is a finite amount of these highly paid positions and far more qualified people.

> There is a finite amount of these highly paid positions and far more qualified people.

Disagree - I think that the reality is that most of those in the US who are qualified are already living on the West coast. People underestimate the entry barriers to tech because they are already good at tech.

Salaries will fall as more Gen Z (grew up with tech) enter the labor market, but I'm already seeing higher offers in LCOL areas because the tech labor market remains tight in tech right now.

The real differentiation between west coast/{"non-traditional"|LCOL} areas seems to be around non-base compensation offerings.

I've got a friend who is a remote L6 solutions architect with AWS. His compensation is decidedly west coast: ~30% annual bonus and insane RSU grants, while his base is near or below mine. Stock offerings are atypical in the companies in many of these areas, and 30% bonus is unheard of for technical people.

So while LCOL areas may have better base comp, people expecting six figures worth of stock grants aren't going to bite.

What that means I'm not smart enough to know. :)

The people making the hiring decisions are providing high pay because if they don't, then the person they want to hire has the option of working elsewhere for high pay. The people accepting the high pay are able to get the high pay because they have the option of selling their labor to someone else who will give them high pay.

Price is based on supply and demand curves, and cost of living isn't directly a causal factor. If it is true that FAANG can keep printing money while hiring people willing to accept lower pay, then that will happen but it will be because the FAANG's prospective supply of labor would have increased.

similar here in detroit but anything above 140k is going to be extremely rare. You probably would have to have some serious negotiation power/leverage to be able to get that.

Can you link to a nice house as a reference?

Appreciate it. Exactly what I was looking for.

The higher income people in Indianapolis with children tend to gather in the northern suburbs of Carmel/Zionsville, etc. Those house prices ($500k+) are similar to the higher income suburbs of many other higher cost of living cities.

Seems like a 20-25min drive into the city

There's lots of sprawl in cities like this, especially Indy. Everything is 20 minutes from everything else ;)

If you wanted a house in a more trendy, downtown neighborhood: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1627-Fletc...

It’s in the city limits, and there’s tech firms located all over the city and suburbs. It’d be about 20 min to get downtown though, yes.

(Obvious throwaway ;-))

I live & work in one of these cities and have my entire career. I currently work in a midsized tech company but my experiences and numbers hold with my previous work at a non-tech enterprise.

In general, the numbers I see:

* Individual contributor salaries range from 80k to 120k, with a bonus structure from 6%-8% annually.

* Upper-tier ICs and people managers tend to be around 110k-145k with 8-10% bonuses

Currently as a principal engineer I make ~$165k with a 12% annual bonus target. Previously as an enterprise architect I was on around ~$155k with a 15% bonus. A friend at a senior director level is around $185k and I'm not sure about the bonus but I know it is 15%+.

There are a variety of tech companies in the area, but many jobs are tech jobs at a "non-tech company": banking, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing. Even then, don't underestimate the size and scope of what is done; my last job had an IT department of around 200 and was responsible for running a ton of complex systems.

You'll probably skew towards midsized companies to large enterprises. While there are some regional startup incubators you just don't have the same access to capital that you do in the Bay area.

It's ludicrously affordable to live here:

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/43-Fairfie...

I could find a similar home for around $75k.

There's plenty of cultural activities, dining, nightlife - I couldn't be happier.

The biggest risk is likely the limited amount of "slots at the top": there are probably at most a few dozen top-tier positions to fill in this market, so job changes have to be carefully considered and planned.

Chicago is vibrant (lots of restaurants, theaters, etc), easy to get around (great, safe transit and often dense neighborhoods), and cheapish (really solid places to live for just about any budget >$700/month).

This article is misleading about tech jobs, though. They're tech roles at non-tech companies. Even our local unicorns are companies like ShipBob (great co, to be clear, just not that _sexy_).

Not a typical situation, but I work at a FAANG office that's located in the midwest (I grew up here, so it's all I know culture-wise). The salary is great (paid similar to non-bayarea west coast), but the job interview was the same process as with the coasts and there were a lot of good and experienced applicants per position since this is one of the best-paying opportunities here.

Personally, I strongly prefer this to the hustle and bustle of the big and expensive cities - that's my preference though, and I know that it's not for everyone.

Not working at a tech company, but I live in the Des Moines area. I bet most people don't realize Des Moines is a finance and insurance hub, with Wells Fargo as the largest employer, Principal Financial headquartered here, and numerous other insurance companies.

The cost of living is quite low, and it's routinely ranked very highly on the "good places to live" lists that pop up periodically.

I think it runs the gambit, but for sure medical, biotech, and ag companies are huge. One of the biggest and fastest growths we've seen in Madison (even if we weren't cool enough to make the list) is Exact Sciences -- a company that provides and tests mail-in poop kits to test for early signs of colon cancer.

In St. Louis, almost all of the engineers working for me in the past 5 years have had total comp between 100 and 170. New grads were in 60-80 range, but I think one or two job changes should have you at 100 in your first 3-5 years.

Last year I was lured from New York City to one of the US's big 25 metro areas, not in the Midwest.

In New York, I would go to topic-focused programming meetups at Facebook's NYC headquarters and there would be over 200 people there, meeting after meeting. There's nothing like that here. The local university has some tech meetups, and there are some in the city center, but they look nothing like in New York. Due to Covid, I have not gone to any (and they seem to be cancelled any how).

Right now here, there are a handful of job openings that I am well-qualified for, but I can count them on one hand. In New York there are more job openings I could go in for. It's one of the biggest drawbacks in terms of a long term future here.

I have friends in the Phoenix metro area. The Phoenix metro area is larger than the Bay area metro area population wise, but the tech scene is smaller, and it small enough that everyone seems to know each other.

One nice thing in 2000 is as the dot-coms imploded, the job market in New York was not as heavily impacted as the Bay Area market. I started 2000 working for a startup that had IPO'd and ended it working for an investment bank. My salary was bumped up slightly, whereas some more junior people I knew in the Bay Area were laid off as their startups went bust and had trouble finding jobs out there as the market was flooded with junior or even mid-level talent.

I do know good, senior people who are tied to this area for one reason or another, who have moved around the handful of companies that are here. There are only a few big companies here employing a lot of programmers, so just like Phoenix, everybody seems to know each other here. When people are unhappy at my company, they contact former co-workers who moved to one of the other big companies and get pulled into their teams at their companies.

There aren't many "tech" companies, you're working for a Fortune 1000 company in their IT department usually here. Or a smaller company, although startup funding is not fantastic here.

I am not capable of senior level pay on my current stack yet, and a nice, large apartment in a nice, convenient neighborhood is cheaper than in NYC (although not incredibly cheaper). So I don't have much to complain on the salary front. But as it stands, there are less openings on the job market locally, and as I become more senior, it might even feel more constrained. Local companies have trouble attracting and retaining senior talent, and there is a reason for that. My company has been changing compensations rates around and making other changes in order to lure more talent.

Primarily due to the smaller number of job openings locally I don't see much of a long term future here outside of my current company. If I ever decide to look around, it will probably be in New York City or in the Bay Area. And my reasons for going back to New York City would include personal ones. Although one very good young programmer I know said he would prefer New York over San Francisco as he thinks New York would have more of a nightlife etc.

Interviews are really tough. Salaries are awful.

Seriously. Please stay in your coastal enclave. It's terrible here :)

Don't forget the terrible bbq and crowded traffic and Ferris Buehler's crashing all the parades!