Seattle has got to be the #2 tech hub in the country, tied only with NYC because of the latter's sheer population size. The home of Amazon, Microsoft, Tableau, Valve, Redfin, Zulily, Cray, etc. cannot possibly be second tier.
Nope, no sense at all. Similarly, DC is listed as Tier 3 despite higher salaries than Tier 2 Toronto and major investment from Amazon, Google, and other big tech firms.