Kinda like how everything in SF is so expensive, so the real wage is diminished by the increasing cost of living.
SF also is a problem for anyone not making more than $150k/year because it's a magical wonderland where everyone wants to live there, and so they're willing to irrationally sacrifice their financial futures to hang-on to something they can't afford, i.e., paying 50%+ income in rent, unable to contribute 10% to savings, and other forms of financial suicide.
How lower income people make it in SF, even with rent controls, seems like an unsustainable proposition.
I think a better way of measuring of microeconomic affordability is a reasonable budgeted cost-of-living for one person per month in a median housing situation in relation to their potential income. In other words, or thought of another way, the ratio of cost-of-living to income in local nominal dollars.
Between scenario A: rent control, some poor people are helped, others are not and scenario B: all poor people are forced out of the neighborhood, A starts to look acceptable.
Until that is, someone comes up with a workable scenario C that helps even more people than A. (UBI looks great in theory, but I think the "workable" part needs some more work.)
Articles telling us to focus on team, rather than individual, productivity should probably be viewed through this lens.