In a normal city, that lifestyle is
dirt cheap. As in, your total spending could be under $15k/year. That frees up a whole lot of possibilities beyond a $100k/year bachelors-degreed corporate 9-5. Grad school, skipping college altogether, the arts industry, the nonprofit sector, part-time work, etc. all become feasible. And if you
do go for a high-end white collar gig, your savings percentage is ludicrous - you could very quickly get the point of sustaining the same lifestyle on investment income alone.
If you can tolerate strangers in your kitchen and living room, it's rarely the optimal move to pursue that lifestyle at a high-stress white-collar job in an expensive area, where it's merely prudent. Do it in the sort of place where it's liberating.
I'd also guess that people making the tradeoffs necessary to land at a $100k job are motivated, at least in part, by the desire to live better than this. People who made those tradeoffs during a less severe phase of the housing crisis are feeling a little cheated right about now. Are they the most sympathetic victims in the world? Of course not. They'll be fine. The market will adjust - Bay Area companies will pay more, or have a harder time hiring as word gets around about what those job offers really entail. But it takes time for those cultural memes to propagate - just like it took a while for the general public to catch on that law school is no longer a meal ticket - and people caught up in that latency are going to be a little pissed as the material conditions that their oh-so-alluring "$100k" can buy get worse and worse every year.
As an aside, $1500-$2000 is a lot to pay for a room in Oakland. You'd expect to be in SF for that. Out south and west (towards Daly City) rooms can be $1200 or even $1000.