My friend who works as an engineer at Google was lamenting to me the other day how his 350k+ TC basically feels like nothing in NYC after federal, state and city taxes. He takes a 50% loss. Why would you want to continue living in a place that takes what is a top 1-2% earner for our age group (25-30) and makes them feel poor? And that is even considering RSUs since those are vesting monthly at Google now.
He's almost priced out even in Brooklyn, paying over 3k for his 1 bedroom. But if you don't want to live in some slum lord pre ww2 shit hole you need to be paying a lot.
I'm in the same earning bracket and I've been contemplating a further move because while Jersey is easier on the wage taxes, the property taxes are insane and make buying a house here deeply un attractive.