[rayvy]

> Most rank-and-file joining one of these cos in the last 4 years or so will be lucky to net $1-2m pre-tax

Yea I'm confused as to where all these splurge-happy millionaires the article mentions will come from. There will definitely be people well off (as you mentioned), but I'm not sure if these folks will have the money (that they want to spend) on boats, and lavish parties. It seems like a good deal of these employees will get early retirement/nest egg money, and a few execs will get a few million, while founders obviously make out the best. Not sure why that would "eat San Francisco alive".

A sensationalist headline if ever there was one {facepalm}

[sjburt]

The SF housing inventory is not large, only a few hundred homes on the market, and few thousand sales per year total. A couple hundred people that can buy at any cost, and a thousand more that are willing to push their finances to the limit and you could see a pretty significant change.

There's also a multiplier as price jumps let people cash out of their current homes with lots of spare equity.

[throwaway-1283]

My point is that most of the rank-and-file at these companies will make, on an annualized basis, about as much as a typical FB or Google or Netflix employee makes in liquid comp today (of which there are many thousands). I'm just not sure if the marginal increase in "people who are now liquid" will do anything to the market and from what I've seen prices are not trending sharply up in anticipation of some sort of bidding war. I could be wrong. It's just an observation.

[throwaway-1283]

Yes, and the people who have really made a lot of money (the founders, execs, earliest employees) have likely already had several opportunities to cash out over the years, so the market is already priced accordingly.