cost of living in those areas means these guys live at best above middle class unless you want engineers to essentially never have children and live in an apartment all their life, then even 200-300k in these areas isn't much.
As an engineer living in Europe and inside an apartment I can confirm.
Also wanted to add that when we want to feel less trapped we can very easily escape to many other nice places that surround us in the near vicinity, I usually go for bookstores and coffee-shops (from where I’m writing this comment), other people also choose parks, bike-rides, stuff like that. We manage.
