Noah Berger/Reuters
Jenna Sampson, a former community relations manager at Twitter, works on the company's rooftop deck in San Francisco, California.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, even a six-figure salary can make tech workers feel poor.
A Twitter employee speaking on the condition of anonymity told The Guardian he's scraping by on a base salary of $160,000. The employee is in his early 40s, lives in San Francisco, and has had to borrow money in the past to "make it through the month," The Guardian reports.
"I didn't become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet," the Twitter employee said. He added that his salary is a "pretty bad" income for trying to raise a family in the area.
In The Guardian article, the anonymous Twitter employee said his biggest expense is the $3,000 he drops on rent for a two-bedroom house in San Francisco - which he described as "ultra cheap" for the area. He lives with his wife and two kids.
The Bay Area is one of the most competitive rental markets in the US. In San Francisco, the median rent tops $4,200 a month, according to real estate site Trulia. One analysis suggests mid- to senior-level engineers at companies like Google, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter can expect to pay between 40% and 50% of their salary renting an apartment near work.
Millennials, who make up roughly 30% of the San Francisco population, are driving prices sky high. And they are increasingly interested in boarding with a significant number of roommates in order to save money, which makes for tougher competition in the housing market.
People between the ages of 18 and 34 who work full-time in San Francisco earned a median salary of $59,000 in 2013, according to US Census data.