Comment by strken

Levels.fyi puts the median software engineering salary in San Francisco at USD$238000, while the median where I currently live is USD$90000. That's 2.6x higher.

Yeah, I get it. The multiplier on the salary has gone down from 3.6x to 2.6x. A studio is ridiculously expensive, I once paid $2300/month to live in one room in the piss-soaked Tenderloin, I understand your pain. It's not as good as it sounds. Still ... if you were sitting in Germany or Dubai and had to decide which area to try to recruit from, do you think you'd choose the more expensive one unless you had no choice?