The difference is that in the Bay Area it may be that the ratio of those with to those without obligations is lower. It's certainly socially acceptable to implicitly discriminate against "older" (mid-30s and up) workers in certain sectors of the tech industry out here.
That said, I briefly considered applying to Tesla. Then I did my homework and asked around: their pay is below what even a green "webdev" at some random startup might expect (well below in some cases), and the work/life balance seems to resemble something closer to the video game industry (lots of "crunchtime") than to anything respectable. (NOTE: Of course that is based on anecdotes from contacts and, e.g. sites like glassdoor.com; it's not a scientific survey of employment at Tesla.)