Could you please forward me jobs advertised that have the real possibility of "ridiculous amounts of money"? All the programming jobs I see are about 90k?
It's worth noting that engineering salaries rise a lot quicker then traditional non engineering salaries, but the also plateau much earlier. The engineers making $150k with 8 years experience aren't far or are at the ceiling of their earning potential (without going the management or architect route).
It will be interesting to see if the continued increases will be sustainable over the long haul. From my non-scientific back of the napkin math it seems like NYC tech wages are up about 30% from where they were 4 years ago.
Factor in cost of living and you're really not making much more.
I live in Manhattan. Within some 2-digit amount of minutes, I can experience the Tribeca Film Festival, I can visit some of the best museums and galleries in the world, I can get involved in the thriving nightlife, dozens of top restaurants, hundreds of huge retailers, and a massive tech scene. Whether we're talking conferences or weekly meetups or user groups or opportunities like Hacker School, there's just a higher chance it's going on in NYC than in a smaller city. Obviously when it comes specifically to the tech scene SF+SV+Bay Area is the juggernaut, but comparing NYC and SF to some small town is comparing some top college football player to some NFL players to your local middle school's quarterback. Yes, if I lived in the Midwest, I could get a McMansion and slightly larger numbers in the bank account if my industry's salary doesn't scale well between city sizes (again, programming does), but is it really worth it to give up all the other opportunities and stuff in bigger cities?
Even within these areas, you want to compare your income with median in your closest neighbourhood of about 10,000 people. In most of these neighbourhoods with tech population, $90 would probably place you in bottom 30% bucket. In essence, you will be relatively "poor" and get pushed you out to fat outer areas of community where there are either no good schools, facilities and/or commute is ridiculous.
Always look at median of your target neighbour to compare your income, not the national median.