As a non-tech hub guy, I think your last point probably isn't true. Where I work, the best devs are not on par with the Stanford/MIT etc. people, but we can hol

As a non-tech hub guy, I think your last point probably isn't true. Where I work, the best devs are not on par with the Stanford/MIT etc. people, but we can hold our own quite well with the next tier down from New York, San Francisco, etc. (A lot of the devs here are from India originally but some are locals and the point stands regardless.) I've worked with a few of those people from big tech hubs on joint projects (one or two even went to prestigious technical colleges), and we had a high level of mutual respect and trust in one another's abilities. Whether my salary will trend towards yours or vice versa I don't know, but I definitely think I could have gotten a pretty big bump had I moved to San Fran. I don't because of many types of friction (laziness, family/friend/other relation ties, age, so on). If that friction goes away I assume we'll become more direct competitors.