No, Bay Area was good for early homeowners and old/current landlords will milk money for some time.
if you really expect to stay in the Bay, be ok with renting forever or at least for the next 40 years.
Or you can work as an engineer and be smart about saving/investing
If you can't afford a house with 350k+ TC you're dumb and can't be helped.
If you have to ask... the answer is.... no
It's almost necessary if you want to work in tech. Seattle is maybe your other option if you want to have a plethora of jobs to choose from. Lots of other places in the US also have tech jobs but not a very high volume.
New York is an exception, everyone has a satellite office there
I recently left the Bay Area for Austin Texas. I'm very happy with the move. Since it's relevant, I could afford to live in the bay + buy a house and all that. In Austin the people are much more friendly, it's not super overcrowded, there's no state income tax, you can easily afford a much nicer home, the schools are great. There's definitely more but those are the most important to me, oh and 1gb internet. For cons I prefer the cold bay weather, but hardly notice it since well I spend most of my time inside and AC everywhere. The property taxes are higher. The Chinese food is pretty awful in my experience, that's one of the things that really sucks imho but sushi is actually much much better here. Indian food I've had so far isn't as good but not bad. Honestly the only thing that actually sucks for me is the lack of good Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean. Especially the smaller shops that have street food. Tldr if you have a lot of money going into the bay it's sort of ok, but if you're trying to build up assets etc... then gtfo your standard of living will skyrocket + you'll save money. Some of the large companies are hiring engineering in Austin now too if that's your thing (amazon, Microsoft, google)
And THIS is why hubs and I want to GTFO. We can totally afford it. just tired of governmental incompetence and the insistence on rack 'em stack 'em housing...
no. Seattle is the new bay area
minus the sunny weather
Folsom? Closer to bay If you want to move back to Bay Area? But only limited alternate opportunities for hardware
good and bad..yes it is expensive but everyone on blind is well paid