I completely agree but how many jobs are there in Iowa paying that much? I'm sure there are some but it's hard to fault people for going where the jobs are.

My whole point is most jobs aren't in SF or NYC, and most software devs make six figures. Even if the high six-figure jobs are concentrated in those two locations (I'm sure they are, especially if you expand it to Austin, Chicago, and D.C.), there are going to be plenty of people making six figures in low COL areas. FAANG only accounts for a small percentage of dev jobs (a few tens of thousands at most, out of nearly 4 million devs in the US). Let's call it 100k to be super generous, and that they all make above the median. With 3.8 million devs, 1.9 make six figures. 1.8 non-FAANG. NY State has 220k developers so let's remove all of them for the sake of argument, even though that's going to include the guys in upstate in low COL, and double-count a bunch of FAANG folks. We're down to about 1.58 million non-FAANG, non-astronomical-COL living folks at least who are making six figures.

The BLS stats might be a good place to test those estimates:

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm#st

Again, note that I’m not saying you can’t make a good living elsewhere - having spent the first 15 years of my career doing that, it’d be odd - but that it’s not a simple ticket to being rich or even especially upper middle class. The pay scales definitely drag down, there are fewer jobs (and thus promotion opportunities), and they’re concentrated in the higher cost areas of low cost states.

Still solid, no question, but not a gold ticket. Note that many of the things the person I originally responded to are expenses which don’t scale down: if you live in a rural area your house is cheap but the two cars your family needs cost the same, computers and other consumer goods are only slightly less, etc. Those private schools are cheaper but not dramatically so, etc.