EDIT: Downvotes incoming so I am blocked out of responding to comments for 8h.

San Francisco is one of the most expensive places on earth. $180k/yr doesn't go very far in San Francisco specially if you want to have a family. Dual income becomes pretty much mandatory and if one of those incomes are lost, things start to get tough.

Pretty much anywhere else in the US (outside some parts of the East coast) and almost anywhere in the world, $180k/yr is an amazing salary.

Tech was already moving towards asynchronous working but AI just exponentially accelerated asynchronous work. Bulk of the software in 2026 has been written, reviewed and tested by AI (whether the HN crowd likes it or agrees with the practice, or not).

"AI" has, and will, suck out capital out of the market - this, coupled with non-zero interest rates is putting companies under pressure where cost savings is the top, if not one of the top priorities.

So these two conversations are happening in every board and executive room in San Francisco:

- SMB/startups: Can we go faster with less people if we load up on tokens? Yes.

- MNCs/Large Orgs: Are our engineers out of Austin or Asia equally productive with AI assistance? Yes.

So the decision is simple: San Francisco's expensive engineers and tech workers are useful in a rapidly contracting niche. They are still valuable for startups based out of SF (but the startups are just hiring less than they used to). They are still valuable for rapidly expanding companies based out of SF that are not yet having the cost discussion - Anthropic and OpenAI are certainly hiring.

But rest of the companies are just hiring equally talented workers out of Austin or Vietnam, for way cheaper.

The highly skilled will continue to get hired but the median worker out of San Francisco is being replaced.

That said, AI is making it increasingly easy to start your own business. I certainly have been encouraging people to find their own customers before their (ex)employer forces them to.