>In the Bay Area, it's not unusual for 22-year-olds CS graduates to be making more than $80k/year, even at VC-funded places. Maybe that's "less" than what experienced developers can make, but it's just crazy-high for the country on average.
Yup. The bay area, in general, is pretty crazy wage-wise. in '07, I think Yahoo was paying it's interns like $24/hr. Now, our housing is crazy, too... you see shared bedrooms going for $1000/person in mountain view.
It's different here. Median per-capita income in Santa Clara is somewhere around $100K/yr.
The thing is, if those kids got an entry level gig at a large corporation, they wouldn't make that much more, but they'd get dramatically better benefits. I mean, you want grants not options - but you can get those, and that's not the half of it.
Also, you have dramatically more stability at a large place, and quite often get severance if you are laid off... something unheard of at a startup, and that is cherished by folks with families.
Edit:
Also note, you said "even at VC funded places" as if VC backed companies paid less. They only pay less, for a person without a lot of experience, in comparison to corporate behemoths. And even then, only if you factor in the better benefits and stability offered by the behemoth.
If you want to find a place that pays less... there is a whole 'shadow IT industry' that pays barely above service wages. On the corporate side, you have places like geeksquad. You also have a lot of small ISPs, like, say, my company. It's a place for people who can't get into a VC-backed startup (or an internship at a large corporation) to get a toehold. People move up from 'shadow IT' to 'real IT' whenever they can. That is the path I took, in fact.