You give way too much credit to the types of companies that get YC funding. I’ve seen a lot of meh corporate jobs posted here with corp dev type wages.
This is in the Atlanta market where I use to live before I started working remotely and moved. I got this email from a recruiter there. It’s about the same in most major non west coast markets
(Starting on page 26) https://motionrecruitment.com/hubfs/TSG-25/Atlanta-IT-Salary...
Compare that to any of the BigTech or adjacent companies where entry level developers are getting return offers from their internships of $150K-$175K.