All the best jobs are in the big expensive cities. Everywhere around the world, if you want the best job you will need to go to New York, SF, London, Tokyo, Paris, Munich etc. That's one reason why everybody wants to live there.

Second reason would is to be close to a large number of people which greatly increases social activities you can do. In a large city even a niche hobby will probably attract enough people that you can find a group of buddies who like same things.

How do you define "best job"? I want to minimize my commute to work. Right now I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive without touching a highway. If I lived in San Francisco I'd need to make over $300k just to break event when you look at the insane cost of living, and that's not even taking into account the higher federal taxes or California taking its cut.

Most people want to live in big cities for the big cities - not because of the jobs there. NYC would be really fun, but I'd need to make an insane amount of money to have the same lifestyle I have now and a 10 minute commute to boot. In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a car. A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small apartment.

>> How do you define "best job"?

If we stay within the context of software engineering jobs, I'd define it as something using latest tech and pushing new frontiers in different areas (AI, machine learning, distributed computing, dev ops).

So it would be jobs working with interesting tech (things like functional programming, or something like Tensorflow, microservices with Kubernetes and Golang, using newest dev ops and automation stack, distributed systems etc) and on interesting problems and novel ideas. Majority of these jobs will concentrate in big tech hubs where it makes sense to invest heavily into R&D like this.

Outside of major tech cities these jobs will be more sporadic and most jobs will be for companies which treat tech as a cost centre so you will end up working on some boring internal CRM systems made from bunch of enterprise overpriced products with horrible APIs glued together with some Java or PHP code.

>> Right now I work about 4 miles from my house, which is a 10 minute drive without touching a highway.

I live about 15-20 min walk from my office currently. If a city has sane transport system it might be more efficient than driving a car. I understand commuting to work by car is more of a US thing. At least in Europe in most major cities you can use mass transit (and most people do). I don't actually need to own a car and can save money as I don't need to buy expensive piece of metal that will start depreciating the same day I bought it, no need for insurance or parking space.

>> Most people want to live in big cities for the big cities - not because of the jobs there.

Of course. I agree. Lifestyle is a major reason why people want to live in NYC or London etc. But I also think that unique and plentiful career opportunities are an important reason. There are simply opportunities you won't wind anywhere else.

>> In fact, that'd be impossible, because now I have a yard, a dog, and a car. A 10 minute commute in NYC would pretty much require me to be in a small apartment.

This is true. I have only lived in tiny apartments my whole life so imagining living in a house with lots of space and a yard/garden is very appealing. Definitely would prefer that.

My yard is 11 acres, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. 17 min commute.

Is it really the best job when the out of control expenses in those cities leave you no further ahead than someone working in the 'not the best job' elsewhere? Unless by best job you mean some kind of non-monetary metric, but I'm not sure that holds either. The best jobs for non-monteary reasons in my opinion are also found outside of those cities, but are definitely low paying due to the fact that everyone wants to do that kind of work.

It depends. You are right that you can probably be monetarily better off living in some smaller cheaper city and working as a developer for a non exciting company. Real estate prices in that city are probably something like 3-5 times lower than SF/London.

The downside is that selection of jobs is very lacking in places like that. If you are not happy with your job, or want to try something else (maybe go to a different field within IT), it might be very difficult to find anything new. Also in economic downturn like 2008 there will still be enough new jobs in big tech hubs but anything outside might dry up for couple of years.

Another factor is that even though everything is super expensive and you might be relatively poorer compared to somebody with 60% of your salary but living in a place with 40% cost of living, once you manage to get on a property ladder in a city like SF, given the constantly rising real estate prices, your house will be worth a lot once you repay your mortgage and can be a great way to retire later.

I think part of the point is that it's not the "best job" if you have to work 40+ hours a week, at least for some people.

Unfortunately the only way I can see to relieve this is to support remote/WFH workers who might live in suburbs away from major city centers, or even in a totally different part of the country. That, and decentralizing our entire culture. That'll be much harder.