I'm not sure I can believe that. The companies who hire for average senior engineers like me do not compete with FAANG. They hire the 90% of us who aren't rockstars and have accepted we have no upward mobility in our careers.

I know very many devops/software engineers in San Francisco making $140k-$150k total comp.

Sure, the vast majority do. But to say that only a small handful of companies pay this is just untrue... it's probably in the high double or even triple digits. Many namebrand non-FAANG (ie. Linked-In, Uber, Snap, Slack) do, and some you might not even think of. One example - OpenDoor, which pays over $400k for a regular senior engineer.

Additionally, it's not uncommon for small NYC fintechs to pay straight cash comp of $350k+ for basic senior fullstack devs.

All these places do the standard FAANG type interviews though. They're all competing for the same talent pool, and typically they're full of ex-FAANG engineers.

I think you might slightly underestimate the sheer # of companies and tech jobs in the Bay Area? I think Hacker News is an echo chamber when it comes to this because there are so many "rockstar" type engineers here.

Not arguing that 95% of companies don't. Just saying there are many outside the base FAANG camp that do... it's a much bigger ecosystem than one might expect at first blush. If you hang out on blind or get contacted by these companies over time it becomes evident.

What cracks me up, is how little a sub-200k salary is in SF.

100k less, in most other places on the planet, affords a much richer lifestyle.

When I work in SV, I expect 2x the salary minimum, just due to the cost of living, and housing cost differences.

Anything less than 300k? I'll make more working in Canada, at 150k.

This is just patently false. I live in SV and have pretty high living expenses, around $80-90k/year. If I were earning $300k, after 40% effective tax rate and CoL, I'd still save ~$100k. That's far more money in my pocket than the hypothetical Canadian employed me earning $150k, both nominally and especially so after the currency conversion.

Probably. But there is worldwide demand for good developers, try looking into remote work. I've spoken with many people who have more than one "job", which amount to long, but not insane work weeks.

One thing I think a lot of people underestimate is the sheer amount of _clueless_ (or almost clueless) software developers out there. There are a lot of young people with good intentions but very, very little "real" experience (writing a React web app for a class assignment isn't "real" except for saying you've tried the framework). Work experience is quite different from CompSci knowledge, evne if both are important! If you have even just 3-5 years of real experience building real systems with real failures and real successes, you should be quite easily employed elsewhere if your current job doesn't meet your expectations.

Keep this in mind: we don't let surgeons operate alone before they have 5-6-7 years of _post-doctoral_ education and training. If you have the battle scars and experience to get a project done properly, you should be fine.