Not sure if you lurked much before creating an account. This is not my first account - I've been here since 2014. HN took a strong left turn a couple years ago. Before that it leaned more tech, and before that more founder/entrepreneurial. If I had to guess, it comes from this change in user distribution as HN is a decent way to keep a pulse on tech and IC's simply have more labor concerns.

(this is a weakly held take. just spitballing)

I think a lot of tech workers thought they were an elite of irreplaceable specialists that would never experience power imbalance. That's how my peers were thinking (out loud) about 10 years ago in San Francisco, and loudly opposing the mere idea we needed unions.

They then started having kids, running into HR issues and all of a sudden everyone got a real harsh wake up call and understood what their real place in life is.

The kind of "told you so" that doesn't feel particularly satisfying.

It’s still pretty bad. The majority sometimes seems to have a very naive libertarian slant but as people get older they generally wake up from that fantasy as they get screwed over in various ways.