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Low salary in a cheap city is almost never better. Your expenses will look very different but at the end of the day, engineers in Palo Alto are left with likely 5x the cash in their pocket than those in a cheaper city. I think the value of the leverage you earn with that larger savings is underestimated by many people.

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The whole idea is extremely tone-deaf. If programmer a in SF gets to save 10% of their salary per month, and programmer b in wherever gets to save 10% of their salary... well... it's a huge savings and wealth disparity. I get it, your rent is high, but why does that mean you deserve to save 10 times as much as someone elsewhere? And everything you buy on Amazon still costs the same price. Your cars cost the same. Etc.

That only works if you are single, and live in 200 sq ft studio (which by the way will run you 24K per year after tax dollars). Then you can save and get ahead.

If you have a family of four you will almost ALWAYS be significantly worse off in palo alto. Even if you rent, The average 4 bedroom in palo alto is about 7k per month if your lucky which comes out to 84k which is about 130k in pretax dollars. Day care for 2 kids is about 60k per year. You'll need at least 225K just to scrape by, with no eating out, no vacations, etc..

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