Well, the lacking passion could be explained because the most known tech companies aren't very attractive. They intentionally obfuscate any technology, restrict access and disallow experimentation.

If you want to leech on the crowd that likes tinkering, you shouldn't give them some shitty iOS/Android environment and call it a day. For the industry, tinkering has become a security problem, scary warning boxes about unverified code being run on a piece of metal. How horrible! It is old and stagnant and just not that interesting.

There are some alternative venues instead, but they have a focus elsewhere.