Tech employees are in the same boat as the locals: they can't own homes either, and they are constantly treading water with long hours and heavy ageism to keep making money that keeps them in the middle class in the Bay Area. It's the homeowners who have actively lobbied against any development who are the real culprits here.
That is not to mention the utter failure of Bay Area towns to figure out mass transit that actually works, which would have averted this current catastrophe.
Every time I go to a conference in SF I wind up riding the BART from SFO with the Europeans. All the other Americans (including travelers in my party who might drag me along) insist on taking a Cab, Uber, Super Shuttle, or if they have exceptionally poor judgement they rent a car from the worst car rental center in the world. (If you used that rental center you’d assume car rentals are ripe for disruption and you’d start Silvercar)
America, especially the West Coast, has a very strong driving culture. If you want to get somewhere, you get in the car. That's the default. I did this on my first visit to Seattle.
This blames governmental failings on corporations, which doesn’t make sense. It also seems a lot less altruistic given the author has opted into Medium’s paywall.
So many bay area firms seem to think they live on sacred ground and wouldn't move anywhere else for any reason.
If their productivity is really a function of the place, the market-based answer is to raise local taxes until they start to leave.