3 ms·

You shouldn't focus only on "high coder salary" but also on quality of life. Here are some that come to mind, in no particular order: Austin, Portland, Boulder

• VLM 13y ago
  There's a tradeoff between the two. If you want quality of life you'll be infinitely better off in Madison WI or a suburb of Milwaukee WI than in Chicago, both much less than 2 hrs away from Chicago for the occasional business meeting or weekend getaway. Perhaps Minneapolis. On the other hand if you're trying to pile up money to do "something" once the pile reaches a certain size (take time off and go to Nepal, or perhaps do a startup) you're probably better off with a much lower quality of life in Chicago with correspondingly higher pay. Look out for taxes and AMT, a guy making $50K/yr more than I do in Chc is only making $2K/month more after taxes, but his cost of living an equivalent lifestyle would be far in excess of $2K/mo more (probably more like $5K to $10K more, from what I've seen), on the other hand if he's willing to live worse than a student, he could bank all that extra money...