That's highly arguable. Young people like cities, that's where the girls and the parties are. That's been true for a really long time.

In the case of SF almost every 20-something I’ve interacted with is here primarily for career and plans on relocating at some point.

SF used to be a place people moved to because they wanted to live in San Francisco, they wanted the culture, the access to nature and its beauty, the arts scene that was traditionally more cutting edge (citylights, burning man), the cutting edge food and wine scene, the walkability.

Nobody moves to San Francisco for that anymore. They move to San Francisco for work not life. They move to San Francisco to extract value from a job and then leave.

San Francisco is too amazing a city to be relegated to becoming a company town. If there is a positive outcome from this, it will hopefully result in a recalibration and people who want to be in SF because they WANT TO BE IN SAN FRANCISCO will stay and the people who came here to just smash and grab some cash will leave.

So I took the plunge and moved to Washington last October before COVID was a thing. And i couldn't be happier. It was all because my company had a SF and Bellevue location.

I forsee many other people doing the same now that job opportunities aren't tied to location.

I was forced to work in SF because thats where the Jobs were for me, but I never wanted to be so near or work in SF.

Instead of having to pay exorbitant prices in an extremely in-demand real estate market, people like me could move a little further out and still have reasonable access to those social, leisure, or other opportunities with slightly more time invested without requiring spending 5 hours a day commuting.

Spending 2-3 hours in transit one way to get to work is not reasonable. Spending 2-3 hours in transit to spend the day in the city on the weekend is a little more palatable.