What makes it arrogant? It's a starkly different perspective...but arrogant?

The quote is "I'd have given the middle finger right away"

How does that person know that without having been in that situation? It's so easy to say "I'd never do that" but history is full of examples where most people just fell in line. Just look at around at most big tech companies or banks. There are a lot of people who may not be comfortable with their employer's business practices but in the end they stay because they don't want to lose that nice paycheck. I am not judging these people, they are like most of us. I am judging people who say they are different without back it up.

I have quit jobs for less, but I suppose nobody can have an opinion on what they'd quit over (or over and over) without being in exactly that situation. You know what's easier than saying what you'd do in a situation? Discounting what someone else might do by putting qualifiers on their ability to even say it.

You wrote " I can't even sympathize with someone so willing to grab their ankles."

I still think your attitude is very arrogant. Maybe one day you will be in a situation where you can't just quit and find anther job easily. This may help you learn to have more empathy with others who are in a less privileged position than you are.

I put it crudely by intention. I don't believe that the author is less privileged or devoid of choice here. We must call out those that encourage these practices with their continued support of them instead of twisting it in to pity when it's clearly a case of choice (as author mentions towards the latter part about working elsewhere). We're never going to increase employee confidence and mobility if we're so quick to appeal to emotion in cases where it's clearly invalid.

If you actually want to bring change then saying "I would never ever do that and I have no sympathy for people who aren't as strong as I am" is a very bad way to give confidence to people. What you did was to pat yourself on your shoulder and to declare others are losers.

It’s like a humblebrag in a sense- saying something that seems relevant, but it’s really just an excuse to put other people down and exalt oneself in a roundabout way. I see it a lot on HN and it always comes across as very very young people who haven’t had to make tough choices in their lives yet. When people describe tough choices in such oversimplified terms, I think they think it makes them sound tough and wise but it really sounds naive and narcissistic.

Ditto for people who brag about getting triggered by some question in a job interview that they feel is beneath them, so they claim that they got up and left the interview right then and there, as if that’s something to brag about. It’s so cringey every time some HN poster brags about immediately bailing on an interview because they thought someone asked them a dumb question.