Here's a fun little snapshot of where we are as a city: the people we trust to keep us alive are moonlighting as AI trainers because San Francisco is just that expensive.
Physicians — people with over a decade of specialized education, crushing student loan debt, and the kind of credentials that should theoretically put them in the financial clear — are picking up AI-training gigs on the side to make ends meet in the Bay Area. Let that sink in. If doctors can't comfortably afford to live here, what does that say about the rest of us?
The gigs themselves make sense on paper. AI companies need domain experts to help train medical models, and who better than actual physicians? The pay is reportedly solid for contract work, and the hours are flexible. But the fact that these side hustles aren't just "nice to have" pocket money — that they're increasingly necessary — tells you everything about what the Bay Area cost of living has become.
This is the downstream effect of decades of bad housing policy, runaway regulatory costs, and a government that treats every budget line like a suggestion rather than a constraint. When you restrict housing supply, jack up utility costs (shoutout to PG&E, the company Bay Area residents love to hate), and layer on every conceivable tax and fee, the math eventually stops working for everyone — including six-figure earners with "MD" after their name.
As one local put it about the sticker shock of Bay Area living, even someone coming from Ontario — not exactly known for cheap electricity — feels "absolutely robbed by PG&E every month no matter what we do." When Canadians are telling you your cost of living is brutal, you've got a problem.
The silver lining, if you squint, is that at least these doctors are finding ways to leverage their expertise in a booming industry. The depressing part is that they have to. We've built a city so expensive that a medical degree is no longer sufficient insulation from financial stress.
Maybe instead of celebrating SF's status as the most expensive city in America like it's some badge of honor, our leaders could try actually doing something about it. Cut the red tape on housing. Rein in utility monopolies. Stop spending taxpayer money like it grows on the trees we can't afford to plant in our $400,000-per-unit affordable housing projects.
Your doctor shouldn't need a side hustle. The fact that they do is an indictment of every policy failure that got us here.
