What companies did you look at and what do you consider market rate? You might consider Silly Valley salaries to be market rate but they're not. In fact those rates are what the top 1% of coders make if they're lucky. I would expect Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and other competitive technology companies to pay those rates but market rate is going to be 60-180k. There are tons and tons of jobs paying in that range from less cool tech companies like NCR, AT&T, Borland (Micro whatever), and IBM. There are also tons of other companies headquartered in Atlanta willing to pay those rates like Rubbermaid, CTX (trains), Coca Cola, and Bank of America. There are also a lot of companies that tend to pay below market rate for coders because of the cool factor of working for them like the TV and Film companies.