Yeah, I should have just chosen San Jose (as a proxy for "outside San Francisco") rather than that weird SF/SJ split I chose just because many colleagues and I

Yeah, I should have just chosen San Jose (as a proxy for "outside San Francisco") rather than that weird SF/SJ split I chose just because many colleagues and I happen to commute there from the valley. And you're right that they may be including taxes, but a lot of that is federal so I wouldn't expect to see a big difference. SF->Austin just demonstrates what a bad deal SF is financially, because SF->SJ gets you half the savings (22%) with no pay cut at all.