Not the original commenter, but I'd say... Imagine you've been given some VC and you are in the Bay Area and you have to compete for hiring with large established/stable companies, and you only have a year or two of runway to build your product. You're going to pay well for good engineers. So this creates an artificially inflated market for engineering talent that doesn't necessarily translate to other areas or countries that don't have the same injection of VC capital (you could also call this "desperation" or a "labor friendly" market). There are definitely enough engineers here who are willing to take the gamble of salary vs equity to keep the startup companies bootstrapping, but increasingly I've met more people who want salary and stability, and that may be due to the increasing expense of living in this place. So, the spiral continues.
