This is one of those things that is a great idea until it isn't. When your employer goes belly up, in SF, you have to fight off job offers. That's not going to be the case elsewhere.
It's also much harder on the employers: if you think finding one good job is hard, try hiring an entire team of decent employees at once.
Ultimately, it's worth the extra cost of staying where the tech is, prefixing your city name ala 'Silicon xxx' not withstanding.
Anybody in tech in SF is constantly fighting off job offers, not just when their employers go belly up.
At some point, costs will reach a tipping point where people will start to look elsewhere(I don't mean 1% of people and I don't mean the Easy Bay, but actual significant people moving away from the Bay Area).
> When your employer goes belly up, in SF, you have to fight off job offers.
That's a chicken-and-egg problem. Companies choose to set up shop there so employees will feel more comfortable taking risks because of the demand for developers. However, the demand for developers exists because companies tend to set up shop there.
"When your employer goes belly up, in SF, you have to fight off job offers. That's not going to be the case elsewhere."
In my experience, this is not going to be the case in almost every major city and in some areas not near a major city. Places where I've found/been recruited for jobs easily: Seattle, Portland, Austin, Philadelphia, Central NJ, NYC, San Diego, Atlanta, Dallas, DC. And those are just the places I was looking into at the time. Sure, if you're looking for a very specialized niche, the bay area is a better choice, but for most engineers that just isn't the case.
Keep in mind that the job market is not predictable. For the moment, getting a job seems to be a little less painful than it usually is, but I will bet you any amount of money you want that this situation won't last. Remember 2007/2008... nobody was "fighting off job offers" back then.
It's not like those other cities are tech wastelands. You'll be able to find a good job. Maybe it won't pay as much as a city where you're being fought over, but then, it doesn't need to.
I had multiple clients (I'm a developer and a contractor) who had job reqs open for months at a good pay scale and had a heck of a time finding people in the Boulder Denver area.
I think that the tech frenzy is great enough that people are fighting over tech folks in other areas--maybe not as violently as in SF, but still fighting.
I guess that could have been it. I did some hiring a year or so ago and they pay scales were comparable. And the numbers I see are similar to what I've seen with other jobs (friends, email lists, etc).
In Denver and Boudler I'm seeing SWE postings with salary 100K - 160K. Not really much different then SF and a lot cheaper housing. You are really much better off in Colorado then Norhter California. Don't tell anyone!
Spending 50% of your income on rent isn't the same thing as losing money, unless you're defining "losing" to mean "spending." I doubt many of these SF tech workers started with some savings and are watching their savings decrease each month.
No, the context is insane rent prices. That doesn't translate to losing money. Several people have stated that the difference in salary is making up for it, to where they have as much after rent, after tax income or more than in other places.
It's also much harder on the employers: if you think finding one good job is hard, try hiring an entire team of decent employees at once.
Ultimately, it's worth the extra cost of staying where the tech is, prefixing your city name ala 'Silicon xxx' not withstanding.