Median household (not personal) income in the bay area is well under $200,000, so I disagree that $600k is not doing “extremely well”.
However, I personally believe that most EA executives earning in the mid six figures could easily earn even more if they were to move to the private sector.
Perhaps that also answers my other question. The reason so many orgs are based in high-cost cities is that there are lots of workers who are willing to eat that cost themselves, taking a big hit to everything I would include in a “quality of life” metric in order to get something that can only be had in the big city.
Median household (not personal) income in the bay area is well under $200,000, so I disagree that $600k is not doing “extremely well”.
However, I personally believe that most EA executives earning in the mid six figures could easily earn even more if they were to move to the private sector.
I would define “extremely well” relative to the extremes of the income distribution rather than the median. However, according to https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/California/San-Francisco/Household-Income the “mean of top 5%” income is $563k so $600k would count as “extremely high” by my definition too.
Perhaps that also answers my other question. The reason so many orgs are based in high-cost cities is that there are lots of workers who are willing to eat that cost themselves, taking a big hit to everything I would include in a “quality of life” metric in order to get something that can only be had in the big city.