For an expensive US city with a "tech" concentration, only the article's "BLUE" category (6 figures) is usually viable, AFAICT. If you look at their chart as everything except blue being red, almost nothing is viable.
You can scrape by on some 5-figures in such a place (assuming no trust fund, and that parents didn't buy you a condo), especially if you have roommates and a hope in growth of circumstances (e.g., startup founder or equity-heavy employee, or the academic postdoc situation), but that's not a good plan for open source work.
You can scrape by on some 5-figures in such a place (assuming no trust fund, and that parents didn't buy you a condo), especially if you have roommates and a hope in growth of circumstances (e.g., startup founder or equity-heavy employee, or the academic postdoc situation), but that's not a good plan for open source work.