You realize that that sweet $140,000 Silicon Valley base salary at FaceGoogBox is worth less than that very middle class $80,000 in Atlanta, once you adjust for cost of living, right?  If you want to buy a house, it&#x27;s more like 
$40,000 in downtown Atlanta.  It ain&#x27;t poverty, but no one&#x27;s getting dirty rich off of that kind of salary, either.<p>Is someone making $80,000 for doing 60 hours a week of highly-skilled, highly-profit-bearing work &quot;overpaid&quot;.  In my opinion, that&#x27;s underpaid.<p>If anything, we&#x27;ve seen recent evidence that SV salaries are &quot;deflated&quot; compared to other industries and areas of the country, due to collusion, frequent targeted hiring of very young, often naive grad, inflated time at work, etc.<p>I don&#x27;t work in SV, for the reasons I outlined above, so this isn&#x27;t some kind of self-justification.<p>Edit: To be clear, I don&#x27;t disapprove of people working there, I know it&#x27;s beautiful and a nice place to live. I&#x27;m actually defending SV engineers from accusations of &quot;inflated&quot; salaries. It&#x27;s just not a good place to go to get rich as an engineer with a family.