It's tricky I think. There are really two orthogonal statuses at play. There's the status conferred by being far wealthier than typical for the area. There's also the status conferred by having a respected/liked job.

In Seattle/SF your wealth status is high, but your interestingness status is low. Dirt low even.

In NYC your wealth status is middling, but your interestingness status is relatively high. I prefer this setup far, far more.

But I'm also not a sociologist - maybe we're defining status differently.

well at least she didn't say "thats nice what sort of cars do you work on" when she found out that he was an engineer