Its really understandable why that would piss them off and I sympathize. At the same time, it seems like the only solutions are for me to quit my job and "fuck off", or to live in the suburbs and suck up a > 1 hr commute. People deserve to live a good life and improve their station, and that includes techies who are well off, in addition to the poor and middle class.

Unfortunately, it currently seems like the techies improving their station is coming at the expense of the poor and middle class who were there.

I hear and empathize with this complaint, and I think it's a real problem. But what about the people on the other side of the fence? You work in software, some company pays you a lot to move out here, and you're in a position to choose where you want to live. Should you really not live in a particular area because it makes you part of a bigger problem?

Well you are new, so you should be required to take your substantial income and use it to get a place an hour from work so you can bus everyday.

That's totally the way the world works right?

At the same time, why are you more deserving of living there than them?

There are good arguments to be made against gentrification, and there are good arguments to be made that people don't deserve to have special privileges just because they got here first. It makes me sad that a lot of the public debate in places like Seattle comes down to "fuck you, go home."