But the benefits are definitely hard to compete with. I worked for 8 years back in South Florida, 4 at a web hosting company, another 4 at a digital media company. Having to buy pop-tarts/soda in a vending machine, 2 weeks vacation, dealing with dinosaur middle management. It's incredibly frustrating.

Now I'm in the Bay Area and I often consider getting out but in general the jobs here just have better benefits. I'm not just talking about foosball/ping pong tables. I'm talking Gourmet meals, 3-4 weeks vacation, unlimited sick time, people who want to work on interesting technology problems, great salaries plus equity.

If I decided to leave my job today, there are a ton of good options all over with the exact same comp package, because they have to to be competitive in this area. I could relocate but I'd feel I was held hostage by the other options in the area I chose to move to.

I've seen the other side and it'd take a lot for me to go back.

And that's really the thing a lot of these articles miss. While 20-somethings are making software to automate burrito delivery to other 20-somethings with drones in San Francisco, there's a whole world full of developers solving real problems each day. But it's hard to convince the rest of the world that there's more to the software industry than the Bay Area echo chamber.

Edit: I know not all of Silicon Valley is doing pointless startups.

This is true. There's a perception that 20/30-somethings are the hot thing in tech because they're building the kind of consumer apps that techCrunch likes to cover.

But there are a ton of startups/developers building really cool tech - in SF and beyond - and they end to be older and more interested in real technology vs cashing out their options.

Yyyyep. Step into one of Walmart's cubicle farms in Bentonville, Arkansas and it's mostly middle aged folks hacking away in C# and VB.

Or step into somewhere like my workplace in downtown St. Louis, a skyscraper built in 1911 renovated into modern offices.

The bootstrapped, 6-year-old former startup I work for is filled with people from their 20s on up past 50s making, selling, and supporting Software as a Service, with the developers hacking away at a RESTful API and Ember.js apps. Plus, we share the building with Kickstarted startups like Pixel Press, VC-funded startups like TrakBill, etc. and we're a couple blocks from an incubator + coworking space with 80 startups at every stage.

Being away from Silicon Valley doesn't make you automatically boring, or a cubicle farm, or even full of old people

So having all the buzzwords is what makes you cool?

"RESTful API", "Ember.js apps", "Software as a Service", "sharing the building with kickstarted start ups".

Wasn't saying it was. Actually, we have a YCS13 company here in Northwest Arkansas (DataRank).

Interestingly, the Walmart Lab in the bay area is a big promoter of html5, javascript, and all of the latest web tech.

Yeah - they've actually got many people using NodeJS. http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/why-walmart-is-using-node-...

Nashville represent! I build mobile apps for a living and I love that the environment here is diverse and creative. Walk into a coffee shop and you see people talking, writing, and socializing - not bent over their identically sticker-covered Macbook Pros.

As an iOS dev here, you can expect to make 85-100k and spend < $1000 / mo on rent. There's also no state income tax, so you get a 9.6% bonus right off the bat. Not too bad if you ask me!