Job searching in Silicon Valley / SF different than other areas?

I'm originally from the bay area but all my professional dev experience has been in a different state. I'm looking at moving back to hopefully take my career to the next level, have noticed the job ads / companies present themselves very differently than they do in my area (where I am now its usually clear in job ads they basically don't give a crap, just spouting off generic bs about years exp, outdated platforms, etc) but the ads in the bay area seem a lot sharper. Basically what I'm asking is, I have found using recruiters in my current state to be helpful to advance my career but not sure using a recruiter in the bay area would be the best approach but I'm also leery of spending a bunch of time talking to smaller companies who may not be willing to pay what I'm looking for (with recruiters its always been very upfront with this), not that I'm looking for anything outrageous, just I have dealt with some startups before who were basically only willing to pay well below market rate. Any insight is appreciated.