I wish they had considered more cities like Cincinnati, Nashville, or Cleveland. Those are actually fine places and they have low COL (although Nashville’s is getting up there). Plenty of other cities in the US also fit that profile. Even though I’ve heard bad things about working for Amazon and wouldn’t work for them in Seattle or DC, I would seriously consider taking an Amazon SDE salary somewhere that salary could go very far
That, in turn, requires the presumption that a lot of software developers want to live near DC.
It's bad everywhere but DC has a weird love of choke points and funnels and abrupt 70 degree turns with no shoulders or overflow or spillover.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/seattle-traffic-congestion-nin...