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> Knowing that you can just screw off and do whatever you want for a year then have a dozen interviews lined up for six figure jobs with nothing more than a few emails is really empowering, actually.

Unless you're a front end engineer. Then you'd be behind about 4 frameworks, 2 build systems, and 3 transpiled languages. Might as well be a fortran programmer at that point.

I'm in Sydney. While not compatible to SF I do feel I can leave a job after a year and grab another one quick. I'm about to start a new job. It took 2 weeks of looking to land a good one.

In fairness, there are plenty of other places in the country with good tech scenes where you wouldn't face this anxiety. None of them quite like the bay, but it's not as though you have to relocate to Flint MI or someplace with zero other prospects. The CO front range, NY, SLC, ATL, and so on all have healthy tech economies, and more places keep cropping up.

> I can't imagine the anxiety of living somewhere else and being dependent on a single good job no matter what the relocation bonus is.

"if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"