[tene]

Having worked in SV for so long, it's hard to really imagine what this would actually look like.

What are some examples of important work with decent pay in an inexpensive area that a SV tech worker could be good at?

[7thaccount]

If you work with electric utilities or various regulatory entities (the wholesale power industry is pretty large) you'd be making well north of $100k as an individual contributor (engineer, technical analyst, software engineer, operator, economist... etc) if you have about 8 or more years of experience. If you live in any of the southern states, a house is easily findable in the $180-$250k range. That's better than having to buy a $1.5M home on a $300k budget. You can expect to work around 40 hours per week with some occasional rough patches depending on the job.