I'd say it's more like conventional factory towns from a couple centuries ago. I grew up in the Boston area, and on a recent trip back home, took my wife to see Lowell National Historic Park, birthplace of the industrial revolution in America. It struck me how similar the stories of the young women who went to work in the mills were to the young people who now flock to the Bay Area. Like today's workers, they were fl…
> Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. Thanks for sharing. I was under the impression that this was a relatively new phenomenon with the advent of sky high compensation in tech roles. Do you happen to know how common it was for them to be making, say, $300k in inflation adjusted terms by, say, age 26? I'd love to read…
Re: Treating the Bay Area as like working in the mines
#21My guess was that standards of living were drastically lower back then, so the accumulated factory wages could make a difference. Back then, people lived in crappy little houses with no electricity, no water/sewage, obviously had no cars etc. There was relatively little stuff in their lives, so, as long as the land provided you with food, you didn't need much money. My grandma used to live like this in rural Poland - they occasionally bought something with money, like salt or matches, both mostly were self-sufficient.