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claesbergrynon 2015 Engineering Salaries Reviewed

Are there dev jobs paying, say, $150k in Chicago? If so, I don't see much advertising/discussion for them...

Yes, there are. Not as many of them, but they exist.

My experience is that base salaries in Chicago are comparable to the Bay Area. It's probably harder to get a $75k+ per year RSU package, because the people who are at that level are more likely to be older and to work in finance for cash rather than RSUs of an illiquid company.

If you're in Chicago and look for good programming jobs, you should reach out to me (claes.bergryn at gmail) because I have some ideas.

claesbergrynon 2015 Engineering Salaries Reviewed

San Francisco rents are worse. Five years ago, SF was a better deal.

Also, if you're a decent programmer in NYC, you'll make 20% more than your counterpart in SF. The downside is that NYC finance jobs don't involve equity packages. The upside is that there are bonuses (wildly variable) and there's much more of a career track. Finance companies care more about their peoples' careers than Bay Area tech companies, and that's a big part of why the techies end up answering to finance in the end.