It is worth keeping in mind that SV's focus is only one area of employment for programmers. The major Northeast hubs have tons of programmers. The difference i

It is worth keeping in mind that SV's focus is only one area of employment for programmers. The major Northeast hubs have tons of programmers. The difference is that a lot of them work for the financial industry, government contractors, pharma, and the "unsexy" sort of older tech companies. This is good for finding somewhere with a lot of programmers but the downside is that the employment market is just as tight here and COL/salary is nearly as high. -------------- If you're looking for somewhere that actually offers you payroll savings but still has a good enough talent pool to be able to find employees fairly easily, that list is pretty small and arguably getting smaller. A lot of the trendier secondary cities for this (ex: Denver, Portland, Austin) are themselves getting very expensive, very quickly.