As someone that's lived (and hired people) in both low-cost and high-cost areas, the pay doesn't scale the same as the costs. There are tradeoffs for those area

As someone that's lived (and hired people) in both low-cost and high-cost areas, the pay doesn't scale the same as the costs. There are tradeoffs for those areas that go beyond the costs. Usually people think of climate or culture but there were a couple other non-obvious ones that I ran into: 1) Companies that are doing well and growing in a low-cost area tend to suck up all of the available talent in that area, and they need to relocate or increase salaries to incentivize people to move there. 2) Low-cost areas generally have fewer jobs for highly educated and highly skilled people, so as an employee I'm taking a huge risk by moving there. If the job doesn't pan out or the company takes a dive, then I may need to move to a different area to find another job in my field.