San Francisco is where the opportunity is if you're in tech

There is no other city that comes close. Anybody who cries, "it's so expensive there", never takes into account the income side of the equation. It's not how much everything costs. It's how much you make compared to how much everything costs. That's the only thing that matters with respect to personal finances.

While the median rent is 3k, you can find studios from 2k-2.5k in San Francisco proper, and even cheaper right over the bridge in Oakland, or to the south in South San Francisco / Daly City, both of which are not even close to an hour away.

$120k is the lower bound for tech jobs in the Bay Area. This salary is attainable even in support roles. In fact, a lot of the guys asking about code boot camps may be better served by aiming for one of these jobs rather than full-on software engineer. It's much harder to get hired as a software engineer with just a boot camp on your resume. But there are a lot of jobs that require social skills, technical competence, and some Javascript that pay $120k - $160k. Job titles include Customer Support Engineer, Technical Account Manager, Solutions Engineer, Solutions Consultant, Integrations Engineer, etc. One caveat though is that it is much more difficult to progress from one of these jobs to Software Engineer. So if you are dead set on being a developer, then you should continue to apply for Software Engineer jobs, even at smaller companies. If you're somewhat technical, but more of a people person, then these jobs can be a better fit.

Product Managers make around $200k+. These jobs are much harder to get since there's a lot of competition. This is also one of the only tracks that has a career ladder to Director of Product, VP of Product, etc. Get to that level, and you start making $300k - $400k and higher.

Software engineer salaries vary, but at top tier companies, they can make $350k - 400k. Lower tiers $200k - 300k. Entry level at smaller companies can be much lower, maybe $120k - 150k. Again, very competitive, but if you are graduating with a degree in computer science, and want to be an engineer, the Bay is where the money's at.

Salespeople are often in the same range as engineering or higher, but it's based on commission, so that can vary wildly depending on the company and territory.

Sales Engineers make $150k - 250k. This varies pretty wildly based on how technical the product is, and the commission component.

Another thing is that Engineering and Product work in levels. Level 4, level 5, etc. When you level up, you make more money. Engineers have the most liquid skill set, so they jump back and forth between big companies, often after big portions of their stock have vested, and they sometimes level up in the process. Leveling up is easier to do in the Bay. For Engineering and Product, a lot of their compensation is often in stock grants which vest over four years. So some of the big run-ups in compensation are due to the public and private markets, which have been in a bull market for the past 10 years.

Seattle oftentimes has a better return on Investment (ROI) than the Bay because the pay is comparable, the cost of living is lower, and there is no state income tax. So you see a lot of people moving from the Bay to Seattle. But again, Seattle mainly has satellite offices, unless you work for Amazon or Microsoft. Satellite offices have lower career growth potential, so I suspect that a lot of people are leveling up in the Bay Area, and then moving to Seattle to pursue a big offer. There may also be some kind of tax play, but I haven't looked too deeply into it.

A couple decades ago, the prevailing attitude by MBAs was that you could just outsource to India, or wherever, and hire engineers for pennies on the dollar. After all, they're just typists. Then after that idea blew up enough times, people realized that engineers (as well as designers, project managers, etc.) have to be co-located. That's why there's been a massive rise in real estate prices in the Bay Area, because all these highly paid people have to be located in the same tiny area, next to all the venture capital money.

And in my estimation, it's only going to continue in that direction. Every other article nowadays is about remote work, but the reality is that projects at scale are done in-person. And the wealth is increasingly moving from smaller cities to large urban areas, especially San Francisco.

If a recession does hit, it'll hit everywhere else much more in the long term. Boom and bust cycles exacerbate the concentration of wealth.

Yes, San Francisco is not a good city for life. Just like a mining camp back in the mid-19th century was not a good place for life. Some guys are making it work by adapting. They are focusing on college campuses, or staying within certain scenes that suit them like the Marina or the Mission. But if you're not in tech or finance, or really like the area for some reason, I wouldn't recommend it.