You don't need to be at a tech company to work as a programmer.

Contrarian thought: if/when the tech bubble bursts, there's suddenly going to be 1000s of companies laying off software engineers in Silicon Valley, who will all be furiously competing for what jobs remain. By comparison, working in IT at a non-SV/not-pure-tech company, in a town with lots of other non-tech companies, would be much better insurance.

Any largish city will have 1000's (or at least 100's) of companies wanting to hire software developers. Unless you're actively looking you'll probably go your whole life without hearing about 99.99% of them.

There might not be as many as the Bay area, but there is more than enough to keep your employment stable until retirement. As a bonus, much fewer of them will be unstable startups.

Never been interested in being at the “director” level, but most major metropolitan cities have your standard corporate IT jobs in development, project management, etc.

For instance in Atlanta, you may not make $300K a year, but you can buy a 2500 square foot house for $400K - $600K in one of the most affluent areas in the country (measured by median household income) - John’s Creek. If you go a little further up north to Forsyth - one of the most affluent counties in the US, you can get a 3000 square foot house, brand new build with all of the niceties for less than $350K.

Also the “tech scene” is not all it’s cracked up to be during a recession when non profitable companies are dependent on VC funding. There were plenty of tech jobs in profitable corporate companies during both the 2000 dot com bust and the 2008 recession.

Edit: personal anecdote:

I had just been working three years when the dotcom bust happened. The company I worked for didn’t blink. They gave almost everyone $10K raises that year and 20% bonuses because the local market was still thriving.

2008 was slightly harder, developers could find contract work but a lot of companies weren’t hiring permanent employees. Middle management and project managers were hit hard.