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.
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.