Once -- once! -- I was contacted by a domain expert looking for someone else to discuss some arcane tech issue (he was trying to decide if he should commit to a new display technology for their next gen design, or if it was too risky. I didn't make any decision for him or anything, just discussed the issues with him).
Typically the questions I get are from people who aren't really sure about the right question to even ask, typically in marketing or corporate strategy, and typically mid level (not new hires but not the VPs or senior directors either). They always have a particular question they want answered but don't even know enough to phrase it properly ("we're looking into strategic direction for our next level offering and our teams are recommending either writing it in C++ or using the blockchain" -- not an actual question!)
This actually makes sense. If they understood a bit about they domain they would already have contacts, hopefully ones they trusted, to help them decide. The kinds of people who pay (well, get their company to pay) to "speak to an expert" are not idiots, merely domain-ignorant and smart enough to know so. So what I end up giving is a kind of off-the-cuff interactive survey white paper to someone who hopes I don't know who they actually are (well, where they work).
Some things to note:
1) A lot of "tech companies" are really marketing companies.
2) These companies tend to experience weed-like growth, especially during the early stages, which causes other companies to adopt their practices (Dickensian-orphanage employee seating, emphasis on features and innovation rather than quality, short development cycles) in the belief that doing so will make them more innovative and hence competitive in the cloud era -- a form of cargo-cult management.
* In terms of culture, it was primarily a marketing company, not a technology company. Marketroids made up much of upper management. During new-employee orientation, one of these marketroids would attempt to sell you on the company's mission by redefining the word "loyalty" in such a way that it doesn't involve trust, faithfulness, or any other human virtue.
* The office was aggressively open-plan. Engineers sat shoulder-to-shoulder at long benches, with about enough room for their MacBook and one or two monitors, and that's it. There were no "focus rooms" or other quiet places to get work done, only a few conference rooms (and of course offices for upper management). Engineering shared the same office space with sales, marketing, and the other divisions and the place was constantly loud. Even the receptionist's area was out in the open like this. It was like some of the worst boiler-room recruitment firms I'd seen, but scaled up, and you were supposed to get technical work done there.
* The pace was also aggressive. There was an expectation that new features would be implemented and go into production quickly, and this is also the sort of company where you "commit" to work for the next sprint, you do not "forecast". If what you pledged to do by end of sprint isn't done, you will be given the turd-burgling stink eye at best.
With rewards programs being implemented in that kind of environment, is it any surprise that proper care for things like security is not being done?