[lsc]

>If I got paid a Google salary, there's no way I couldn't afford to find an apartment in Santa Clara County.

Sure, an a google or facebook or linkedin salary, you can afford a place to live in the area, no question. But two or three grand a month, post tax? That's still a lot of money. I mean, it's not the choice I would make, but I can totally understand why someone would want to live in the office, even though they could instead spend a lot of money on rent.

There's a lot of reasons why you'd want to save that money; Just one reason: How many of us remember 1999? If this is anything like that, a lot of us will only have a few years in this industry, or we will have a few years in this industry, then spend half a decade doing jobs that pay dramatically less before the economy recovers to the point where we can work in this industry again. Salting away as much cash as you can while the hunting is easy is not a bad idea.