Housing official in SV resigns because she can't afford to live there
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
In this sense, the entire SF Bay Area is essentially a huge college town. It's perfectly normal for a college graduate to pick up and move elsewhere to start a family and live in a more affordable place. This is what Kate Downing and many others are doing.
The connection between them is tenuous at best. At the very least, why is it equivalent to a PhD and not MS or BS?
2) People rarely get a PhD to maximize earning power, so that's a weak proxy. The career path are also different. I think developers after 20 years are more than PhD researchers to become managers. (There are plenty of exceptions.)
3) Last I looked at the numbers, some years ago, a MS in computer science lead to higher career earnings than a PhD. (That's specific to CS - other fields are different.)
What is the source of your numbers? The best I could find was https://www2.census.gov/library/infographics/pathways/engine... which says that in general lifetime earnings for a software developer with a BS is $3.3M while a MS is worth an additional $200K. The US Census numbers don't appear to take cost-of-living into account.
I couldn't find numbers for people who started a career with 10 years in the Bay Area, nor for PhD graduates of top research universities.
4) "Equivalent" is a very broad term. Had you said "career earnings" I wouldn't have a problem. But a PhD nominally means that someone is able do to independent research. 10 years in industry means, what, that someone is able to be employed in industry? That's more like a MS than a PhD.
2,3,4) I think you're taking my metaphor literally, which is not very useful.
I lived in the South Bay for 22 years working in various tech jobs, and I learned a few things about Silicon Valley culture (although I'm certainly no expert). Many young people with some degree of formal education and technical experience move to the Bay Area to establish careers and accumulate some capital. A few get wealthy and can afford to acquire property in the Bay Area and settle down to a reasonably normal life. Most, however, are transient workers who get valuable training and experience that will serve them well when they decide to move to a more affordable place. The "college town" metaphor is my way of describing this pattern.
I think the metaphor you're looking for is that they are journeymen, and the time in the Bay Area their journeyman years.
In the college town metaphor, most of the students are working towards their bachelor degree, not PhD.
Have you ever been in a PhD program? Do you know many PhD researchers who did not end up in the Bay Area? Could you ask them if they think their PhD work was equivalent to 10 years as a software developer?
My parents didn't wait to start a family, purchase property, and start building personal wealth. They got involved in community affairs and local politics. They put down roots and had a balanced life.
In contrast, many Bay Area tech workers are living like extended adolescents, living in rental housing and working on a "corporate campus" for a company that is essentially in loco parentis. Typically they are not engaged in local community affairs or politics. Is this not somewhat like college?
In your father's era, many blue collar workers could also "start a family, purchase property, and start building personal wealth" with their jobs, including straight out of high school.
For that matter, the programmers of the 1960s and 1970s also had little problem getting a solid job.
Nowadays with a PhD in chemistry you often end up doing a postdoc or two for several years. As two data points, https://sankirnam.wordpress.com/category/chemistry-jobs-2/ :
> I didn’t do a postdoc because I wanted to get an industry job, but now it appears that a postdoc is necessary – and this is information that I only found out after graduating.
That in turn points to http://justlikecooking.blogspot.com/2016/05/postdoc-required... , which points out job ads for industry which require post-doc experience.
An organic chemist now likely will be in the early 30s before being able to do the things your father did immediately after graduating. And without having to deal with issues like http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj... or http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj... . Yes, postdocs often have roommates: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=postdoc+roommate&t=ffsb&ia=web .
You end with "Is this not somewhat like college". Absolutely, I agree. My point is that what you describe is much more like the college experience than it is the PhD experience.
Or like a journeyman, who also, at least traditionally, does not 'put down roots'.