Man, it's not like there's 1000 software companies in the Bay Area and 12 in the rest of the country combined. I have a hard time believing you'd be out of a job for too long in Austin or Denver/Boulder or NYC or DC or Seattle?
These places look great from the outside (cheap, plenty of space, infrastructure etc.), but the job prospects during a downturn are radically different as compared to the Bay Area (I'm only talking about 2008, not the dotcom bubble).