It’s not luxurious, it’s feudal, which is why you keep hearing about it.

Managers want people who are so inured that they overlook little things like mistreatment and low pay. They want you hooked. Hooked people are easier to control.

Yeah, there's that culture and then there's also "culture fit".

I would be astounded if a majority of people actually enjoyed their jobs. Feeling indifferent about your job is not a bad place to be.

The OP said nothing about mistreatment so I don't follow you.

> I would be astounded if a majority of people actually enjoyed their jobs.

This is what I try to remember when I'm bored at work. Programmers may be overworked and underpaid, but we still have the luxury to do whatever we want from time to time, and make our own training by reading APIs for new languages because we love that shit.

I have a lot of friends who work in various fields, and I'm pretty sure they don't "love" their jobs as much as I do (even when micro-managers are annoying me).

Recently, I quit my job because the managers became crazy and I told me friends "it's fine, I found a new job in less than 24 hours and it pays more and seems fun." I had to explain them how the programming world works since they didn't believe me at first.

Young people. Young people do, or think they will. In our industry something like half the people have less than 5 years of experience, so there are a lot of marks out there.