I'm not sure I'd agree. From personal experience speaking with larger companies (not FAANG, but larger "start-up"), I was always seeing an even larger differen

I'm not sure I'd agree. From personal experience speaking with larger companies (not FAANG, but larger "start-up"), I was always seeing an even larger difference. Think "~150-170 in Austin, 225-250 in SF". You may want to knock my negotiation skills, and perhaps you have a point there that I could have pushed their initial non-SF numbers up, but these were at earlier-stage discussions and sharing those numbers seemed "reasonable" to them. And this was Austin, a city which the aforementioned salary calculator only gives a -20% "adjustment". Note that even that 30% is for a "large" AR city. Anyone else in that state is given a 37(!)% reduction. In my opinion, which I've been trying to wrangle into a coherent blog post over the last couple of days, any adjustments like this should be an absolute-dollar-number figure. Percentages don't make sense at _either_ extreme. A 60k/year position with a 20% "move to SF" upward adjustment? That is unlikely to even cover the change in rent. 400k/year with a 20% adjustment? Calling that "cost of living" is bonkers.