Uh, I dunno. I lived in the Bay Area (Santa Clara & San Jose, specifically.. far from the city but still enjoyably commutable by rail) for a couple years. I then moved to Indiana and took a 65% pay cut. The bay is expensive, but it's not THAT expensive. As long as you live within your means and understand that 80k in the bay area is not the same as 80k in Indiana (where I live now) you can have a very nice lifestyle.
Housing "eating up all the salary" is hyperbole, plain and simple, unless you're talking about the segment of people who make 100k+ but are still living paycheck to paycheck because they live outside their means.
As someone who just moved from Portland OR to the Bay Area in order to take a "corporate" engineering job in SF (and got a >40% raise in the process) I can say with confidence that the cost of living here, even outside the city (specifically Berkeley for me) is easily 2.5x what is was back in PDX, even with a 60 minute commute and meals comped at the office.
It's not just housing (which costs easily 2x what it does in or near any 2nd-tier tech city) - transportation, food, and mundane but pleasant things like pints of microbrew and movie tickets are way more expensive, too.
Cost of living 2.5x??? Berkeley is not, iirc, exactly the nexus of affordable living. I don't know; maybe I just have cheaper tastes? I agree that rents can be MUCH more expensive; I'd probably pay between 1200 and 1500 for the apartment I live in now (2-2.5x what I currently pay). But I just never felt like it was that dramatic for me.
Housing "eating up all the salary" is hyperbole, plain and simple, unless you're talking about the segment of people who make 100k+ but are still living paycheck to paycheck because they live outside their means.