San Francisco Bubble

I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent).

The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a brewery or bar, no shortage of Trader Joe's with the same prices as, say, Charlottesville VA.

I've found that other than rent, the prices are comparable to other places. If you get a salad delivered on postmates or uber eats or something then that's what you're paying for. That isn't SF.

I think a lot of people are living a lifestyle where they have no problem paying for stuff like a delivered salad when they can walk next door, or uber instead of taking the bus, but lots of people are walking and grocery shopping and not paying those prices.

i certainly have never taken ubers everyday to work even though i could probably(?) afford to do so. seems like an expensive daily habit though.

i actually live in the city where it's not some huge loft in fidi/downtown. good for anyone who can get their groceries sent up to their room but i'm not sure how close to the norm that is. tech workers are all across the board in terms of how they live, how much they get paid and how willing they are to fetch their own groceries.

i live on the first floor of a older apartment complex, but i have to walk down a hill to fetch my groceries. i do sometimes use one of the gazillion food delivery services to eat dinner though.

anyways i would say this is similar to someone who goes to ny, visits the financial district in manhattan for 3 days and then proclaims, "everyone in ny is rich! of course they can afford all that housing! they're so stuck up! why are the cabbies so rude? why are new yorkers so rude?"

> Everything is too expensive.

Just normal supply and demand economics. This happens all the time all over the world when lots of high earning people suddenly move to an area.

> There are thousands of dumb startups.

Yup. And most of them will die. And some of them will become AirBnB. The problem is, it's extremely difficult to predict which is which. That's just the nature of searching for "the next big thing". I'd rather live in a world where there are lots of dumb companies so that the few exceptional ones have a chance to get started.

> People are spoiled.

No, people in SF value their time, as it's the only resource you can't get more of. I absolutely understand why someone with the money would have groceries deliver for them. It's more efficient. The locally sourced and organic thing does feel a bit silly though, although I would say that's a fad you see everywhere.

> There cannot be these many quality engineers.

I'm sure there are some bad engineers there. But SF has a massive pool for exceptional talent, and while I'm sure not every engineer is extremely high quality, I have no doubt that a substantial amount of top tier programmers are in SF. If the majority of programmers weren't making meaningful contributions to their companies, I don't think you would see them being compensated the way they are.