No, his sarcasm came across loud and clear. He was sarcastically "agreeing" with me in order to mock me... except the position he was mocking is not one I have endorsed. On the contrary, I embrace the role of the internet in protest and politics.
The curse of the north bay is the lack of trains. BART runs to the east bay, but not the north.
The ferry is basically worthless if you don't actually live in San Rafael. It's a nice ride, but very slow, and not cheap.
Personally, I quite like the bus system: if you don't mind taking the bus, Golden Gate Transit is great. The commute from somewhere like Novato is still long (1hr) but you can use the time to sleep or listen to audio books. Be sure to check the schedules of the express routes you care about: they end kind of early (~6, 7pm) and the non-express routes that run longer take easily twice as long.
Driving is a different story. There are three things to consider: 1) leave early, like 5ish, especially if you're north of marin 2) if you work in the financial district, the time to drive from the edge of SF to parking is substantial and 3) you can park in the financial district itself, but this will cost you around $25/day.
I suppose there's a fourth thing to consider re: driving which is that your drive home is almost guaranteed to be painful if you have to go beyond San Rafael and are not car pooling.
I can only speak for web application development, but $140k is definitely not for "extraordinarily experienced and talented programmers only" in San Francisco for someone doing js/rails.
Are the people you know working in startups where part of their compensation comes in equity, or the prestige of working at a well-known "great" place?
I'm working in the midwest where the average experience level among developers is "several" years. (I don't know exactly, but it's probably at least 5). I'd be surprised if the average engineer salary here is as high as the lowest pitchbox bracket.
Then I expect the average developer could get a big bump in salary working for an SF company.
But it's not a free lunch: cost of living is high here and some things like commuting are terrible. I know developers who moved back to Minnesota so they could waste less of their lives in their cars.
Hence the appeal of "work from Ohio". 100% remote seems to be an ever more realistic option, but I expect it's still harder to find work, although work is so easy to find this may not matter much. A bigger issue may be finding a 100% remote job at a company with a remote culture. Working remotely with a company whose culture is centred around an office can be an exercise in a thousand little tediums.
The different social dynamics of working remotely can be a challenge as well.
I feel as though my post reads a bit like "don't try to work for an SF company", but that's not really my intent. I mean more to convey that the pitchbox salaries are perfectly real, but it's not too good to be true. Moving to SF to work, or working remotely are options, but salary isn't everything and these choices won't be right for everyone.
No, the developers I know are working for large companies.
Some of my disconnect may be due to where I live. My peers may also be relatively inexperienced, so maybe these salaries aren't nuts. I just wish I knew these numbers before I took my last couple of jobs!
I expect location matters more. Even here, the salary difference between working in SF and only slightly further north can be $30-$50k for comparable jobs.
It's impossible due to regulatory and lobbying pressure. I believe Palo Alto, CA operates a network similar to this, but that kind of network isn't possible in a city like San Francisco or LA.
IMHO the incumbent carriers have no interest in competing if they can be a monopoly.
