My starting salary was $110k, and I couldn't sell any stock for my first 3 years. Living in SF was not very hard, I opted to live alone in a studio costing $1.8-1.9k. I could still save about half my post tax income.

How long ago was this? And do you own your own home now?

That was 4-5 years ago. No, I don't own my own home. The SF real estate market is inflated, IMO, and I could easily see housing prices drop once the populace has had enough of restrictive development policies. Salaries are high enough that I'm still saving good money while renting.

> and even that 100k signing bonus won't go that far in replacing student debt

Better than "zero" signing bonus. $100k takes how many years of saving money? This signing bonus is "free money" provided you stay with the company within the agreeable period.

> $100k takes how many years of saving money

According to one poster in this thread [1], it takes 1 (one) year for him to save up $100k without even trying.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20943752

He's a unicorn. The rest won't be able to pay up $100k quickly.

Not according to levels.fyi

Which has mostly unicorns filling the data...