Nobody actually plans on retiring in SF. When I'm done working here for 10 or 15 years I'll have enough to move and own a mansion in whatever town you live in and retire. After 2 years of working I already have $170k in savings.

Your claim was that

> HN is full of West Coast FAANG SV employees who are outliers.

There are two ways to interpret this claim. Way 1 is to assume that you are talking about West Coast 'FAANG' employees being outliers in the sense their nominal salaries are outliers. Way 2 is to assume you claim that West Coast employees are outliers in the purchasing power sense.

If I assume way 1, then your claim that 'it's easy for people to feel their salaries are low' doesn't make sense, because salaries would be compared in real terms. Moreover, the SV employees wouldn't really be outliers. They'd be perfectly average.

If I assume the latter, which is that the salaries are outliers in real terms, then what I said stands: if someone else is making more money for the same job, you're probably being underpaid.

Also, I'd be a little careful about out-sourcing and rural-sourcing. I've found that many high-quality remote workers charge Bay Area rates regardless of where they live. If they're not, well, that may signal a lack of quality. You can get a bit of a discount, or find a more specialized person than you might otherwise.

To those of you in low-cost-of-living areas: Consider raising your rates to signal your quality. You're worth it.