When we think of SF software, we think of software created by a company whose core product is the software itself, especially when the end-users are individuals or other software companies.
This is quite a bit different than most software developed outside of the bay area. Most of it is either in-house stuff or industry-specific B2B stuff. In these situations, the software doesn't have to be pretty, it doesn't have to use cutting-edge tech to woo investors, resource utilization is much less important, and hell - it usually doesn't even have to scale. It just has to work. It just has to make someone's job incrementally better, and it'll be a success.
This software can be tremendously valuable, and creating it has its own unique challenges, but the job is indeed a bit different than software engineering in the bay, and the compensation is different as well.