Why would I pick up my family and move without a guarantee on the other side that I will have a job for X amount of years. It's too much of a risk and too much stress for everyone involved.
I have never in 30 years had the mindset that I need my current job to get ahead. I needed a job. I’m now on my tenth. 7 of them were in Atlanta until 2020 and the last three were remote and we moved from Atlanta to state tax free Florida after COVID.
The average mid level to senior developer[1] in Atlanta and most other 2nd tier cities working in enterprise dev makes between $130K to $170K and that’s been surprisingly stagnant and hasn’t kept up with inflation since 2016. Compare that to a developer working in any of the major public tech companies or competitive private companies wheee you can make $250K+ easily.
I don’t live in Atlanta anymore and I’m no longer officially a developer. But most developer jobs that come to me are still from there and that’s where I know the most non BigTech developers from.
No you won’t be buying the big house in the burbs. But even if you rent a place twice as expensive, you’ll still come out ahead.
What if you have a house? If I were young today and no kids, I wouldn’t buy a house so I would have the mobility. I would live light so I could move easily.
[1] no matter what your title is, you will be leveled as a mid level developer in any nsjor tech company if all you do is pull well defined tasks off of the board