Twenty-five years ago a recruiter asked my wife how far she was willing to move.
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
But for a lot of people the answer is "I want to live somewhere else." I relocated away from a really nice job with challenging work and interesting co-workers simply because I didn't like where I was living. I suspect that I'm not the only one.
For some, +$20,000 to their current salary is an offer they can't refuse, for others, they would need to double their existing six figure salary to even consider moving to another hub.
But for realistic wages in my field, I doubt there is anywhere that would pay me enough to move. Short of moving into management (which I have little experience with) the most I could expect for making a move would be about an extra $40-60k/year moving to the Bay area which would basically cover the difference in cost of living and maybe a little extra pocket change.
That's not really worth it for me.
But, of course, I didn't literally mean that. Offer me a few million a year guaranteed and I could put up with a lot for life-changing money for a bit. But realistically not going to happen.
Once the basics and some future security are there, more money just means a bigger resource footprint. That's still nice to have, people certainly continue preferring wealth over poverty, but it would be crazy if trade-off thresholds between modesty and ambition didn't shift a little due to awareness of environmental impact.
Not 1.2 or 1.4 birds in the bush