Because they want to own one (1) house in California?

But then that assumes living in California as a de-facto life goal.

It's almost as if we live under capitalism and many people, rational economic actors even, have this goal of maximizing their earnings over the course of their careers, how crazy! If you work hard for a decade at a FANG, you should be well off enough to not have to work another day in your life, if you live frugality and invest every penny you can and move to a low CoL area. Who cares about a possible AI downturn if you're independently wealthy and don't need that paycheck. I don't know about owning a house in California, but not needing a job sounds pretty damn nice to me!

Being on HN often reminds of the late '00s when I was on a message board called Wall Street Oasis, for undergrads who wanted to go into investing banking or private equity.

On that board, it was honestly seen a failure if a person did not get into one of the Big 4 IBs or PE funds. It was like entering a twilight zone, no one could lower themselves into accepting anything less than working at one of 6 companies on the entire earth.