Scraping by on six figures? Tech workers feel poor in Silicon Valley's wealth bubble

Big tech companies pay some of the country's best salaries. But workers claim the high cost of living in the Bay Area has them feeling financially strained

"I didn't become a software engineer to be trying to make ends meet," said a Twitter employee in his early 40s who earns a base salary of $160,000. It is, he added, a "pretty bad" income for raising a family in the Bay Area.

The biggest cost is his $3,000 rent - which he said was "ultra cheap" for the area - for a two-bedroom house in San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and two kids. He'd like a slightly bigger property, but finds himself competing with groups of twentysomethings happy to share accommodation while paying up to $2,000 for a single room.