Eventually I left the city entirely because it was too damn expensive.
That's why surveys like these are useful. There are many companies who will happily underpay unsuspecting employees for years or decades on end.
You probably made the right choice though. Even at compensation levels posted in this survey, there's no value for your money here.
I agree SF is getting way too expensive, it seems you either work FAANG or get out. At least, that's how it feels, and I think the city is worse for it, with every passing day.
I think it's also important to think about where you were working. See my other comments in this discussion; I don't think it's accurate to say "underpaid", "underused" maybe, but not "underpaid".
I'm autistic, so this is an area I have trouble in.
To give an example: I spent almost two years making a hilarious $13k annually in Poland(where I'm from) while my employer was charging our US customers standard rates, so multiples of that.
When I switched jobs in 2015, my salary went up 2.5x.
This whole time I was making 40% of the market rate and nobody bothered to tell me.
My HR guy was open about it. Our company and others were in a data sharing collective. You pick a title, a region, and experience level and it shows stats on thousands of other companies. By the time you drill down, maybe a dozen companies match.
He showed me that for a senior software developer in Orange County at the time (around 5 years ago?), the data showed that I was being paid above median at $120k/yr (pretty sure that was my rate at the time). The problem? I had an offer on hand for $150k. The HR guy was locked with, "yeah, but the data here shows you are already paid above what we should." The CEO helped us meet in the middle. Good choice for me to stay. Base salary is now way higher than what we were talking about then, plus the company went public and I got a start up lotto ticket.
Anyway, yes. The company has a limited vision too of what your salary should be, even when they have more data available to them. The only way to see your market rate is to check the market.