SF or not, that is 5x the US median wage. There's people in the US that would suit up in gladiator garb and fight to death in an arena for that pay.

Sure, but they don't have the absolute most sought-after skills at the peak of the AI bubble? That's the issue. The dude is asking for 996 to work on an LLM/Patchright wrapper library that also works in the cloud. And with these skills, you can get twice or more at more mature corporations.

Technically, they are also writing their own CDP implementation now.

Why work for less if you can work for more, with a better work-life balance?

They would do that but they wouldn’t be arsed to sit down 8 hours a day reading compsci literature.

Spending 8+ hours a day training to avoid death is a pretty good motivator. Mental requirements lower but not gone, physical requirements much, much higher.