Driving to work is the most common way of commuting everywhere in the US except NYC. So in that sense, no, taking a taxi to work daily is not normal, just as walking, biking, and taking public transit aren’t normal.

When I worked in San Francisco I took Caltrain to the city, but I took Waymo from the train station to the office. San Francisco, like almost all US cities, has poor local transit coverage. In my case there was a bus that took a similar route, but it only ran every 20 minutes even during commute hours and wasn’t coordinated with the train, so if everything was running on time it would have been a 17 minute wait (plus an extra 5 minutes walking). I was busy and well paid enough that spending the extra $10 to save ~20 minutes of travel (and the uncertainty of when the bus would arrive, and how strongly it would smell like piss) was well worth it.

According to [1] the median Bay Area big tech worker earns $272k/year - or $130/hour.

According to [2] Uber drivers make $15 to $25 an hour, before expenses like fuel.

So while it's not normal it's certainly plausible that some people take taxis on a daily basis.

More broadly, as levels of wealth inequality rise in a given society, more people end up working in the personal service sector doing things like cleaning, food delivery, taxi driving etc.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... [2] https://www.triplog.net/blog/how-much-do-uber-drivers-make