lol I'm a senior developer, been in the industry since I graduated with a BS in 2010. I'm in NYC. My salary is currently $82k. I'm not doing anything wrong here - the numbers in the article are way exaggerated.
When I've worked at start-ups in the industry (I've worked in Palo Alto, SF, Seattle, and other places in NYC), it was like, working crazy hours, constant stress and drama, dealing with annoying requirements, and basically working on stuff I don't care about, like mobile apps, vying for popularity, etc.
If a startup wants to pay me to work on these Astronomy simulations I've made, I'd be interested: https://github.com/ccnmtl/astro-simulations (this is what I've done over the past year at Columbia).
If you are comfortable earning what you earn because of the work you do I get it. I looked into working for research universities in the past like UPenn because I'd be working in say cancer research, etc. I get it.
My direct deposit income is something like $2400 every two weeks. That's after my IRA investments, monthly health insurance cost, metro card cost through my job, etc. I work at Columbia University, by the way.
I live in a rent stabilized 1br apartment in west Harlem: $1500/mo rent. After that I have no major expenses other than food, and I shop at local grocery stores and cook at home a lot. I make my own bread, because I like to, not because I have to. I always feel like I have more than enough money. I put around $800 a month into savings and investments.
I'm even able to travel frequently to Europe, Latin America, and to see my parents in Seattle. I agree with Bradley Kuhn on this one: in general, tech workers are wayyy overpaid.
Your call.
Supply and demand doesn't care about what you need to live or what you consider to be over or underpaid.
Considering tech companies earn fantastic profit per employee, the employees are not overpaid at all.