Does not being in the Bay Area hurt your career as a SWE?

Does not being in the Bay Area hurt your career as a SWE?

Yes, but more in the sense of "Your career won't be 110% mega-optimized" as opposed to "You will likely have a bad career being outside the Bay Area". On top of that, not everyone needs to maximize their career; I feel like the vast majority of folks should deprioritize their career as they get older and develop more responsibilities outside of work.

Things are also different as you're a senior engineer. I imagine you're quite independent by now and have the hang of things - You won't get as much benefit working in-person in Silicon Valley as say a college grad straight out of school. In-person learning is far more important for earlier-in-career engineers vs. established ones.

In terms of Big Tech and startups:

• Big Tech: Largely RTO, but there's still a good amount of remote opportunities and they have many major offices outside of the Bay Area.
• Startups: The best ones are overwhelmingly still centered around the Bay Area, and if your goal is to work for a top startup, you probably want to work with folks in-person too.

• For startups, I do think the Bay Area has advantages.
• For teams which have some people in the office and others remote, the remote workers will be at a disadvantage IMO. Try to be at the company HQ (whether that is Bay Area or not).

Here's a related question :) How important is location for software engineers?