As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, San Francisco tech workers making six figures say they cannot compete with the new AI elite and may have to leave
As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, tech workers making six figures are grousing that they cannot compete with the new A.I. elite.
New York TimesEmmy Martin
Context & Ripple Effects
Related coverage traces a long-running scarcity premium for AI specialists: OpenAI compensation drew scrutiny as early as 2018, and a 2024 account described million-dollar packages and team poaching as companies competed for limited talent.
More recent San Francisco coverage has focused on a widening divide in career outcomes for software engineers. The prospect of public-market events at OpenAI and Anthropic places that divide in a more visible, company-specific phase.
First-order effects
San Francisco workers outside the highest-paid AI cohort face an immediate affordability and career-positioning gap, with some considering leaving the city despite already earning six figures.
OpenAI and Anthropic become focal points for the concentration of elite AI compensation and talent as they prepare for planned IPOs.
Second-order effects
Employers seeking comparable AI talent may face greater pressure to improve compensation or lose candidates to the best-capitalized frontier-AI companies, extending the talent-war dynamic documented in earlier coverage.
The local software workforce becomes more segmented: workers tied to the AI elite gain access to markedly different outcomes than peers in adjacent technical roles.
Third-order effects
If public-market liquidity further rewards the leading AI companies, San Francisco's technology economy could become more polarized between a small set of frontier-AI employers and the broader engineering labor market.
The pattern points to a structural shift in which scarce AI research capability, rather than software employment broadly, increasingly determines who captures the sector's upside; the scale of that shift remains contingent on whether the talent shortage persists.
The trend: This is one data point in the concentration of AI-era wealth and bargaining power among a small pool of specialized talent and the companies competing for it.
In SF, Even $180,000 Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough: “Ted Egan, the City of SF's chief economist, said high earners had always weighed whether to accept the city's trade-offs or leave for somewhere with a yard & garage. What's new is the scale” https://www.nytimes.com/... [im…
Once they start talking about how they want a garage and storage space and stuff it's like okay you want a bigger house than you can see yourself affording in SF. Okay. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Gonna be odd to celebrate “Seattle eats SF day” while SF is otherwise the hottest US real estate market Seattle's pre-YIMBY “Smart Growth” upzonings weren't huge, but they still allowed enough housing to overtake SF Never has a city so small done so much to remain so little [imag…
As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, San Francisco tech workers making six figures say they cannot compete with the new A.I. elite. Some doubt they can afford to stay. [image]
Excellent @nytimes piece from @emmymrtin on another turning of the screw in SF. I think the AI bonanza is going to separate the city even more from the rest of the country in a lot of ways and it's going to be fascinating to see how that plays out. https://www.nytimes.com/...
California should legit take control of the city of San Francisco, suspend every single local regulation (not just for housing, but for everything) for 10 years, and hand control back once the mess is sorted out.
23yos making $250k thinking they can just manage and 27yos making $180k salary/$365k base income as a couple complaining about costs need a giant reality check. Yes, few can buy a nice house in one of the most expensive cities in America in their 20s, but this is not struggling. …
they're gonna keep writing this god awful article and people are gonna keep commenting on it and i'm gonna keep saying this is why everyone hates the tech nerds of san francisco
The population of SF has gone up 6% over the last *25 years* despite a massive boom. 6! Alameda: 13.6%, Marin 2.6%, San Mateo 5.2%, Santa Clara 13.7%. US as a whole: 22.3%. MAINE grew faster than the whole SF metro. NEWFOUNDLAND grew faster than SF since 2000! Utter insanity 1/2
a city run by a “pro-housing” majority of Common Sense Moderates and not a single one of them can bear to utter the words “social housing” because it will scare a donor so they're just gonna let this happen.
i moved to sf 11 years ago. my first job paid me $100k/year, and i had to pay about as much as i was paying to live alone in DC to live with 12 people i bought a condo here 2 years ago for more than my dad paid for his 8000 sqft home in georgia i obviously feel like the
As with most NYT stories about money, something's off here. Per Zillow, the average 1BR in SF is ~4k/month, so the couple being profiled should be able to find one under ~5k—unless they're looking for a unicorn that is both under 5k and in a trendy location within the city. They …
“The mean annual pay in San Francisco was $196,365 last year, up from $153,359 in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/t...