Anecdote: I'm a Sr. Staff Engineer at a large employer in a LCOL city. Typical middle class houses cost $300k - $500k here, with luxury houses costing roughly $1m and small starter homes costing $200k (just using real estate as a rough proxy for cost of living).

My base salary is $150k/yr. My cash bonus maxes out somewhere around $80k/yr, and typically falls in the $50k - 70k range. I also receive equity worth roughly $12k - $15k per year. Counting in the value of benefits, my comp package is worth roughly $280k - $300k/yr.

I am extremely well paid for the area I live in. It's very unlikely that I could make more money without moving to a different metro, getting lucky with a remote position, or going into niche contracting.

Just throwing this out there, because a $250k salary (plus bonus) is doing well even in a HCOL area.