They're in California/NYC and by the time you finish paying for housing and taxes you get <100k.
Atlanta can get you to 200k with a (relatively) reasonable CoL but the current housing situation there is rapidly degrading, so get in fast if you're looking. Traffic is miserable, which is true about anywhere.
However, the public transit is hilariously bad with a heavy reliance on buses running on hourly schedules and sitting in said miserable traffic. I think there's one very specific corridor that has the buses equipped to override the traffic signals, but it really led to absolutely nowhere useful to a tech worker and just mostly ran Emory students between dorms and campuses. They never expanded the idea any further. That said, if you can land a job and an apartment within walking distance of a MARTA rail station, you're living the dream. (Good luck with rent! Anything within a half hour walk of a rail station is 2x-3x the cost.)
Any attempt to market Miami as "a tech hub" is a scam. The pay offered is completely out of step with the CoL before COVID. You could swing a Miami senior level job with either an hour commute on some of the most dangerous Interstate in the USA (that's using the toll lanes, too) or a two hour-ish drive + train + bus commute (one-way for both times) utilizing public transport.
I can't speak much to Austin or Dallas, though I've heard highly conflicting anecdotes about them. I doubt you're finding $300k below a Senior Architect type title, though.
Nobody is doing 2-hour one-way commutes utilizing three modes of transportation, especially now.
Chicago has a great pay-CoL balance, especially if you want to live downtown, walk or take the train, and not have a car. But even commuting from the suburbs isn't bad. I-90 into the city is always a parking lot though, regardless of day of the week or time of day.
Atlanta can get you to 200k with a (relatively) reasonable CoL but the current housing situation there is rapidly degrading, so get in fast if you're looking. Traffic is miserable, which is true about anywhere.
However, the public transit is hilariously bad with a heavy reliance on buses running on hourly schedules and sitting in said miserable traffic. I think there's one very specific corridor that has the buses equipped to override the traffic signals, but it really led to absolutely nowhere useful to a tech worker and just mostly ran Emory students between dorms and campuses. They never expanded the idea any further. That said, if you can land a job and an apartment within walking distance of a MARTA rail station, you're living the dream. (Good luck with rent! Anything within a half hour walk of a rail station is 2x-3x the cost.)
Any attempt to market Miami as "a tech hub" is a scam. The pay offered is completely out of step with the CoL before COVID. You could swing a Miami senior level job with either an hour commute on some of the most dangerous Interstate in the USA (that's using the toll lanes, too) or a two hour-ish drive + train + bus commute (one-way for both times) utilizing public transport.
I can't speak much to Austin or Dallas, though I've heard highly conflicting anecdotes about them. I doubt you're finding $300k below a Senior Architect type title, though.