“I thought when I’d make $200k I would be able to basically not worry about money at all.”
Six figures used to be the dream and now it buys potlucks and reality-TV nights instead of restaurants. The math is simple. A new wave of AI money is about to flood the city, rents follow the highest bidder, and everyone below the founder tier gets priced out of the place they moved to chase the dream. The salary number went up and the standard of living went down. That is not a tech worker problem. That is what a housing market looks like when supply never comes.