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Minneapolis is great and underrated. You just have to get used to the cold in the winters.
Minneapolis has a high QOL, good salaries, but high cost of living for the midwest. It was a great outdoorsy culture, but you HAVE to be good with the long winters. I did 21 years there, and once I had kids we couldn't do the winters anymore. It's not the snow as much as the cold temps and blanket cloud gray skies that can get to a person after 5-6 months. It goes without saying that the other 6 months are beautiful
My mistake, I meant to say savings rather than take home pay. There is simply a really big difference between making $380k/yr at facebook (average salary at E5, eg ~10 yoe) vs. $150k/yr in Atlanta. California taxes certainly won't cover that. Cost of living difference could cover that, but it depends on your lifestyle. One living a spartan lifestyle is certainly better off at $380k/yr. With kids and a big house, yeah Atlanta will be better.
But I agree with you that the difference is at higher-end companies which may not be an option.
Interesting; I match your hypothetical scenario right down to the cities and the company, and I moved in part for the reason you listed. I grew up in Atlanta but earning potential and the quality of tech companies was limited. Most of the people I went to college with immediately moved to the Bay Area after graduating. It's a bit sad because the HOPE scholarship paid for my education, yet the state does not offer a lot of incentives to remain there after graduating for people in STEM fields.
With regard to which is better for long term savings, definitely the Bay Area (or even Seattle). The only caveat is if you want a big house, that's just not going to work. You basically need a household of two managers working at public tech companies to afford the equivalent of your average suburban home in Atlanta (a ~$2.5M home in a good school district in the Bay Area is equivalent to a $350k home in a good school district OTP of Atlanta). But other than buying a big house, the savings are tremendously higher in the Bay Area. Even at a smaller company, the opportunities are much better and your earning potential is likely to increase much more quickly than in Atlanta.
That said, why not go for the best of both? A lot of the big tech companies are offering permanent remote work now with only slight pay cuts, so you could live in a low COL place with natural beauty while maintaining a job in the Bay Area.
I'd echo Pittsburgh or Seattle as the top choices. Both have terrific mountain scenery just beyond the city. Seattle is a larger market and more outdoorsy, but Pittsburgh has an edge on COL and high culture -- the museums/symphony are top-notch.
The same pattern applies to NoVA, Boston, or the Bay Area -- the east has much better arts/culture, the west probably has better nature. Personally, having grown up in/around Raleigh, I've never quite seen it (or Austin) as very outdoorsy.
A lot of big tech companies still say that they want people to come into the office. Living in a big metro isn't necessarily about keeping your current job, but about landing your next one. There's a huge difference between being alone on a mountaintop and always being around people who are doing interesting things.
Yes, but as mentioned to what end in salary versus cost of living, or perish the thought....savings? Your argument is a bit myopic via the suggestion of simply higher salaries.
White collar professionals who work 35 years in a high cost of living region have 35 years of max Social Security payments, 35 years of maxed 401(k), and a huge pile of home equity. When they retire, they have the option to move to a low cost of living area and live luxuriously. Someone in a low cost of living area with much lower comp is less likely to have that kind of outcome.
I dunno if the OP's been back since the post was made, but I'll give my take on the Intermountain West cities and throw Denver into the mix.
Of the Rocky Mountain cities it is the best mix of big city amenities and access to the outdoors. SLC is closer to outdoor recreation, but it is below Denver in urbanity or the amenities department. Outdoor recreation is huge here. The Outdoor Retailer convention moved to Denver (from SLC) four years ago.
Colorado has > 20 million acres of public land, and a vast majority of it is in the mountains. There are places where you can backcountry camp within 60-90 minutes of Denver. If you're into mountains, Colorado has over 600 peaks above 13,000', and 54-58 peaks over 14,000'. Public transportation here is ok, but not great. There's plenty of rail, but it's a hub-and-spoke system designed to shuttle people between downtown and the suburbs or the airport.
Other cities I'd look at (in order) - Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, Boise, and Reno.
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