I made the move to the Bay Area with a family in my 30s. It’s not perfect, but we’re saving dramatically more than we could anywhere else. I don’t know how long we’ll stay, but at this rate 5 years would be enough to set us up really well almost anywhere else in the US.

I wish I’d gotten into software sooner. If you come out here at 22, live with roommates and stay until you’re 30, you probably take anywhere from $400-700k in savings with you to then have a much easier life somewhere else.

That’s why people do it, especially when they’re young.

Also in terms of math, you need to know that the big companies here pay about 50% via salary and the rest via bonus and stock, so the salary numbers you see are only the “live day to day” money. The other half of your income comes in big checks every quarter or so, which makes it easy to shovel that straight into savings.

Spending your entire life as a young adult doing that sounds dystopian. May that never become the norm.

Private, quiet space is a visceral need for some people and a frivolous luxury for others. In my experience it's very difficult for the people in these two groups to understand each other. A craving for solitude is an expensive trait, but one I have no qualms about indulging: after spending all day in a giant open floorplan and then commuting on a crush-loaded train, if there were Craigslist strangers in my home I'd be in hell.

It's better than spending your life as a young adult working degrading jobs and starving. In the broad scheme of things, being a programmer is not so bad.

Living in San Francisco, working at a big 5 tech company really isn't that bad. Even the "worst" of the bunch on the work life balance scale, only do around 60 hours a week. Most of them just do the standard 40 hrs a week, though.

So it really isn't giving up your youth or anything. And many young people even enjoy the city of San Francisco. It is a big city. Lots of stuff for young people to do...

Eh it depends, I live with a roommate because I choose to. We're friends, we do things together, it's nice.

I could live without one, my rent would be marginally more, though I'd still probably bank close to the same. But the social aspect is really nice.

Living with roommates by choice isn’t that bad. Needing to live with roommates for financial reasons when one really would rather have a private space to come home to is hell.

Under specific assumptions:

1) You don’t aspire to own a home here, as that will eat easily 100% or more of your savings.

2) You plan to spend your savings in a cheaper place.

USD is a convenient shorthand for purchasing power, but breaks down under huge regional COL differences. A $200k savings account in the Bay Area is like a $50k savings account elsewhere: about enough to think about setting up a middle-class grown-up lifestyle.

Unless you're talking about a home, 200k in the bay is more than 50k almost anywhere else. There are very few things that cost 4x more on regional differences, and housing may actually be the only one. (Other major expenses, like food, transit/gas, and leisure activities like travel or vacations are much less price elastic, 0-30% more)

But it would be irresponsible to take advantage of any of that, because one needs every last dollar saved towards housing.

Not really. 200k is a down payment on a million dollar home. Double that is a 2 million dollar home, which will let you buy in most places.

Thats achievable in 5 years for someone who is working towards that goal specifically, less if you have a partner who also works. Anecdotally, I know two couples (out of not many total) that purchased within 2 years of moving to the bay. One had some savings, and that plus the first years stock vests was enough for a down payment on a condo. The other took ~2 years to buy a home from very little prior savings, which was possible because both had decent incomes.

So I'm dubious as to the doom and gloom, at least for married professionals.

(Of course, this ignores the reality that for anyone not working in tech or 1-2 other fields, these are wholly out of the picture, and that's hugely problematic! But for the calculation of CoL for someone who is picking between tech companies, I think people overestimate the costs of the bay, and I'm not really sure why)

Sure, dual tech income families are doing fine. But with gender ratios as they are, not many of those can exist.

Remember that, as you save, housing appreciates. I've run the numbers; the lines only intersect at all for more conservative % increases, between 8 and 12 years out.

Both good points that I forgot to mention. I implicitly assumed most people would eventually move away from SV, but if you plan to stay there your whole life, then you'll have a much more difficult time buying a home and/or retiring. And having children adds a whole new dimension of financial difficulties.

It also adds a bunch of social difficulties, unless you try to pull of the entire make-bank/move-elsewhere cycle before they reach elementary school age. Once they are in school, they start making their own friendships and relationships, and it becomes much more impactful for everyone to make that move to the new low-cost area, leaving everything they know behind.

I can’t imagine what else I’d do “after” this. I intend to be with the industry for a full career; unless and until it moves, that means being here.

..and you´re lucky enough with the timing for the business cycle to give you that long.

Which probably won´t be the case for most people working there now.