I'm moving to the Bay area in a few months and these sorts of stories make me question whether it's the right move.
The only thing the valley has going for it is the saturation of talent and people who hire talent. The bad, is that without it it's got nothing to really show for itself (save a few niche items). The good, is the lack of any other notable qualities is overshadowed by the overcompensation of the only ones it has.
3k a month doesn't seem too bad when you are making 200k+, which is close to ~triple what you'd make in some rando mid sized city.
Working for the average SF startup though? Yeah, you'd be better off somewhere else.
The ones at your rando tech startup are not.
$150k in Dallas is something like $265k in San Francisco. And I would think in SF your housing would be pitiful compared to the midwest at $3k/month mortgage.
Engineers at my company can make upwards of $300k in Dallas and that gives a standard of living thats comparable to making $1m in the valley which is probably pretty rare.
Things are expensive, but wages are also really high, (I don't know a lot of people in the computer industry for whom $2400 in rent would cause pain.) and I have a great deal of freedom because there are so many nearby employers. there's got to be at least 50 places that might hire me as a programmer or sysadmin within reasonable walking distance. I have to go further than that to get a decent burger! (which is my big complaint about this place; so little nightlife, so little food. But most of the employers feed you, and for weekends there are good delivery services, so it's not that bad.)
San Francisco (and California, to a lessor extent) is setup to charge newcomers way more than long time residents. The density of employers in the bay area means that you can find your place... and just stay there, through many job changes.
No hype. I work harder than anyone else and complete projects at least twice as fast. I constantly push for promotion and raises and hop jobs to get the raise.
Join an org doing something cool, then immediately start pushing to work remote. Or make sure that you'll see a good payout and cash out & gtfo.
The "American Dream" isn't follow an exploitive option just because it's possible.