I've been in tech for almost 15 years and never lived in the bay. My pay puts me in the top ~1% of U.S. compensation. My city is around 1.5 million metro population.
I've worked for prestigious, recognizable, tech companies and local no-name companies.
As long as you're in a metro area with at least a million or two people, there'll be enough software engineering and data center business to go around.
Most of my teams over the last few years have all been geo-distributed, anyways, so its much less common for everyone to even be in the same place, anyways, even if you live in the bay area.
I've worked for prestigious, recognizable, tech companies and local no-name companies.
As long as you're in a metro area with at least a million or two people, there'll be enough software engineering and data center business to go around.
Most of my teams over the last few years have all been geo-distributed, anyways, so its much less common for everyone to even be in the same place, anyways, even if you live in the bay area.