I think bay area is formally about 115k for 4 people to be low-income... So more like 30k/person. More relevant to HN crowds, if that didn't work, Stanford & Berkeley PhD students wouldn't exist. I took a founders paycut for years to be at around 50-60k and still saved money while having fun eating out etc.

We pay our local team multiples of that because that's the local market. However, it's clear the local market is driven by monopoly positions of Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., and the last 5-10 years of crazy capital markets + crypto wave for smaller co's, not COL.

Edit: And apparently by gov standards, local gov doesn't think 25% of SF folks qualify to live there with these kinds of numbers... and yet they do. The standard sets individuals at 80k. That'd be amazing for a lot of people, as it's the diff between housemates / your own 1-2br.

For a family of 4 maybe. You can live just fine on 160k individually