As an engineer living in SF, I agree that it doesn't really make sense for the average software developer to live here. But, if you are top 10-20% (not necessa

As an engineer living in SF, I agree that it doesn't really make sense for the average software developer to live here. But, if you are top 10-20% (not necessarily a superstar), it's definitely the place to be. Whether you want to work at startup or a big company, the pay vastly exceeds the extra cost of living. At a startup, you actually have the chance to make lots of money in an acquisition or IPO. In other places, you really don't. I used to live in NYC. There's tumblr, mongodb, and zocdoc, all in the $1 billion range, which only makes the founders and a few early employees rich. Foursquare was really hot for awhile, but ended up disappointing. Rapgenius imploded. Betaworks companies either stagnated or outright failed. I know tons of great people who got jobs at the hottest companies in NYC at the time and ended up with nothing. In SF/bay area, there's uber, facebook, google, palantir, airbnb, twitter, linkedin, pinterest, lyft, stripe, square, etc, etc, etc. All of these recently started companies are worth billions, and have created or will create lots of millionaires. More importantly, I don't remember any big disappointments in bay area companies, besides maybe dropbox. Almost every hot company from 5 years ago is now worth a lot more money. It's fairly easy to select which startup to work for if you want to optimize for equity payout. Today, I would probably pick flexport. At a big company, you get to work on the most interesting projects. The top executives for all the biggest tech companies are here, so all the best projects are going to be here as well. And the pay is very good - I don't know any senior engineers making less than $300,000 a year, including people who are just a few years out of grad school. In both cases, you get to work on the most interesting technology. For example, there are no self-driving car companies in other areas (besides Pittsburgh). The most successful blockchain businesses (coinbase, ripple) are here. The companies that have to deal with the biggest scale are here (google, facebook). Personally, I more than doubled my already-high pay in NYC by moving to SF. Not moving here earlier was a big career mistake - I would have worked on far more interesting projects with much more competent coworkers and I would have been able to retire by now. Everyone I know who moved from NYC to SF before me is now a multi-millionaire, because they got a job at stripe, palantir, pinterest, or some small companies that managed to get acquired for a large amount of money.