Quality of life is low in the sense that they are paying a huge % of monthly income in rent and usually sharing sub-standard housing accommodations. They don't save much. They work a lot and rarely have time to enjoy the area.

Quality of life is high in the sense that they enjoy what they are working on and feel like there's a decent chance it will make them rich. They are in the middle of a boom and millionaires are being minted left and right. They now have friends they went to school with, who they know well, who have millions of dollars in the bank who rent yachts, vacation in Ibiza, and bang models in Las Vegas (while plotting angel investments and new startups). They feel very close to an indescribable grandeur and if they just keep grinding away they will get there.

So in some ways it sucks, and in some ways it's awesome and they will look back on this period as the best time of their lives. But very few of them think about this as ''real life'' the way people elsewhere in the country seem to, when they think about what community they want to live in, who they want to date or marry, where their kids will go to school and how their life will unfold in the decades ahead of them.