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.

I can't relate to this at all. I'd argue that the quality of life is actually much higher here. Even with longer work hours.

Sure rental prices suck, but to name a few things:

* Weather is amazing. * Wages are higher than anywhere else for my profession. * The quality of food/produce is better than anywhere else I've lived, year-round. * Within a 4-hour driving radius, I can be skiing, surfing, hiking or tasting world-class wine. * Easy to meet up with like-minded people.

Exactly. Any place that has high quality of life + young life will have high rents naturally.

But it's not like these people are stuck here. Most of them could get a job in many different areas of the US and abroad.

It's supply and demand. There's limited supply (SV doesn't build UP like NYC) and a lot of demand (plenty of high income folks).

I agree that rent is high. I'm paying 2x as much to rent a 3bdr/1bath home in Sunnyvale than I was paying for a mortgage on a 4 bdrm/2.5 bath home in Cincinnati. I'd probably be willing to go up to 3x (and might actually have to do so).

I'm not playing the options lottery (though I'm 2 years into founding a startup). I very much like living here and hope I don't find myself back in Cincinnati (nothing against the city, just not my cup of tea).

It's actually beyond low, it's more like a tech sweatshop especially if the company is located in SF.