The most profitable place to be a Software Developer: Seattle

Definitely true! There are software developers in every demographic. We (Codementor) just hoped this may be a good jumping-off point to compare salaries across cities while taking into account taxes, costs, etc. Family benefits, healthcare, and the costs of raising a family change things, you're right.

Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I wouldn't put too much weight on the quality of life index (except for the factors it takes into account). We just included it to give some context outside of earnings, but of course, it is limited in scope. I also would be hesitant to use it to say City A is "twice as good" as City B, but just that City A is ranked higher than City B.

It's also the most subjective; people drastically vary in what they value in their city. It seems like more money is the most universally uniform factor which is why it's treated as the main value focus of all these surveys.

People having to split small spaces, has the same quality of life impact to most people. There is no misconception of what NYC is, lots of people just don't want the life of either paying a ton of money, or not having what they consider to be a bare minimum amount of space, to not even make more (hell the median salary in NYC is 30K less than Seattle right now!). Being from the east coast, there is little doubt in my mind that NYC is one of the worst deals in the country right now which is correctly reflected in this article. In Seattle: I'm a 10 minute drive, and 20 minute bus commute from my work, and the mortgage on my house + maintenance cost is probably less than or equal to your cost for a portion of an apartment.

Essentially it's saying the average (legitimate) software engineering salary in Moscow is too low to afford the average rental + cost of living. Which probably helps explain why so much ransomware etc comes out of there...