I just sent you a link saying that the average engineer makes $100k.
I am claiming that (1) the average developer is awful and (2) you can make that much and more if you're not awful.
> So if these people all just work 3-6 years should I expect a bunch of multimillionaires?
You're not going to be a multimillionaire if you make $250k for 6 years.
I was exaggerating, but if you save your money while making 250k you can easily live off 30k and pocket the rest. It's not hard to become a millionaire off of that salary in a very short amount of time.
As someone who has actual experience with this, it's easier to get a high paying job in those areas because that's where the hard problems are being solved.
Hard problems are usually solved in high cost of living areas because you need to pay your employees a lot of money and those employees usually prefer to live in high cost of living areas. I actually have personal experience with this.
Yes, the cost of living argument applies if your salary is at the low end of the scale.
If you're solving hard problems at a company that values that kind of stuff, then you can makes just as much anywhere else. I actually have personal experience with this too.
No, the cost of living argument does not apply at the high end of the scale. Cost of living starts to become irrelevant as you make more money.
Sure, rent in NY is $60k per year vs $24k per year in Oklahoma, but it's just not that important if you're making $1m+ year.
Second off a lot of the high cost of living has nothing to do with solving hard problems, if it did the civil engineers would have solved the hard problem of fixing the housing market in SF. What you are essentially arguing is Tom Cruise 2.0 makes 6 million a film after a few years in the industry so therefor everyone else sucks which you can tell because they don't make 6 million. Being generous I would claim it's a survivorship bias.
Actually, it's directly related. People who solve hard problems at companies that value that sort of thing make a lot of money. Generally, people who make a lot of money want to live in nice areas. Nice areas become expensive as housing gets bid up by high earners.
Of course, allowing huge office towers to go up but refusing residential development doesn't help.