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