Very. Speaking to tech workers: if you have the means to take an employment gap with reasonable financial security, that's an entirely different thing than doing it without financial security.

Without financial security, to get by, you might have to suffer all sorts of things no one should have to put up with. The hardest parts are probably not what you would've guessed.

A penny-pinching lifestyle can also have effects on relationships. A "starving artist" or "poor student", who thinks differently, definitely has temporary appeal with many. But that's a lot less attractive to a partner's long-term thinking/feeling by late 20s, if they want to raise a middle class family, with good schools, safe housing, and comforts. My sense is that someone whose field seems to be "techbro", but who doesn't already show signs of financial comfort, is likely registering more as no-future, not like a "poor" med student (who will seem viable for raising a family, with just a well-defined period of hard work and non-affluence to get through first).

If at all possible, endeavor to have a FAANG war chest, or to be born to wealthy parents, and your gap becomes much better.