>The problem is you're exposing yourself as someone extremely self-centered, and someone that assumes their lived experience is equivalent of everyone else's, and adjudicating the utility of this particular thing as if you are reflective of the larger population.

Most of Hacker News and indeed the tech community at large exhibit "I don't understand life outside of California cities." syndrome, this by itself is nothing new.

True, but we’re talking household income which includes partner income. Eg $140k + $60k or $120k + $80k. Your main point is still fair, though.

>make at least $200k makes you even more out of touch.

$200K as the entry level for FANNG ( what it used to be call ), and then Big Tech and now Magnificent 7 has been the norm on HN since 2016. It wasn't until 2023 did reality started to hit many.

Which is ~$70 per hour - which you can earn from US firms while remoting across many timezones.

$70/hour is about $145k/year. If you're meaning it's close to $200k/year, that'd be $95/hour assuming 2080 hours/year (52 weeks at 40 hours a week).

I always assume 48 weeks (1 month vacation per year as is normal in most places)

Then $70/hour is only $134k/year, still a far cry from $200k. $200k for 48 full weeks of work works out to around $105/hour.

Could you show your math? This is driving me crazy because I get:

48 x 40 x $70 = $138,240

Which is far from $200k. How are you computing?

GlassDoor and Ziprecruiter are grossly out of date.

https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra...

Use Levels, but change the location to the other big cities in California. The LA number is ~$80k lower than the SF number, while the Fresno average is $120k. The SF area is a wild outlier even in big California metros.

Sorry, but they're far more representative than levels.fyi. The latter has a very strong sampling bias - most of the companies in its DB are on the high end of the payscale.