That brings up a good related question: does the average SV tech salary afford you a decent quality of life? What's the point of a 6 figure starting salary if you can't afford a house and need to commute for an hour just to scrape by?
So you can buy a house in the south bay for $600K, using that as a baseline and a 6% Mortgage you're talking $3,500 house payment which is 60% -> 40% of your take home pay vs 100K -> 150K salary. Leaving you 2K -> 5k / month for other stuff. (car/insurance/phone/cable/utilities/food/etc).
'Average' salary for tech workers is $110K [1] so can you live on $2K/month?
Actually I included taxes, my pass on it was take base 65% of base pay as 'take home' pay and start from there. (I included both state and federal and no dependents as my guess). Dual engineer couples clearly with no kids are in a better spot.
If you are young or single and dont mind renting it is pretty good. I've done the math numerous times and always come out ahead financially with jobs in the bay area.
If you have kids and/or feel the need to buy a house it is probably an entirely different story.
