There&#x27;s a happy medium somewhere between the wasteland of legacy &quot;enterprise&quot; jobs (.NET 2.0 and such) and the nutzo SF&#x2F;SV orbit.<p>I live in Southern California (LA&#x2F;OC). It&#x27;s not cheap by any measure but it&#x27;s within the bounds of economic sanity compared to SF&#x2F;SV. There are tons of very interesting tech jobs in cutting edge areas like computer vision, AI&#x2F;ML, the latest web and DevOps tech, and a lot of hardware&#x2F;EE stuff. There are many other places like this. Canada probably has a few too. Even NYC, which is more expensive than LA, is still &quot;sane&quot; compared to SF when you consider what you get. In NYC car ownership is very optional, which mitigates the high rents, while in SF you must own a car if you ever want to leave the peninsula.<p>I&#x27;ve turned down numerous offers in SF&#x2F;SV because it just seems economically insane. The housing prices are clearly unsustainable and the OP&#x27;s comment about it being a &quot;serious life mistake&quot; rings true. The craziness has also priced out much of the interesting culture that made SF compelling in the first place.<p>Edit: I keep hearing about the relentless ageism in SF&#x2F;SV tech. I don&#x27;t see so much of it elsewhere. Is it really that bad? If so it seems like a SF&#x2F;SV thing and not necessarily true everywhere. In that case it might make some sense for young people to spend some time in SF&#x2F;SV getting into the latest stuff and learning and then bail before 30.