It's interesting that your two examples are of men whose early adulthoods were shaped by large scale global conflicts, yet you totally dismiss the author's idea that the easy rewards of high status and pay in tech could lure young thinkers into a kind of permanent adolescent 'nerd culture' bubble (reminiscent of a kind of a nightmare glass bead game, centered around the subset of mass media that smart kids enjoyed in the 70s/80s/90s - endless remakes, merchandise, collectables, conventions).

Camus/Hemingway were 'intellectual' in the sense that they sort to engage with the wider world, to explore and to understand and to improve it. 'Productivity' culture gurus are usually not 'intellectual' in that sense at all - and they are often caricatured as having a narrow focus in their work, reductive worldviews, social difficulties, and little compassion for other people. I'd argue that productivity culture is actually tied to nerd culture (both are rooted in the huge rewards that big tech has paid for insect-like specialization) and therefore just as anti-intellectual. People are 'guilted' into learning to code, side hustles, day trading, open-source software, streaming, extra-curriculars, making an app, creating content, etc - not studying political economy, becoming a journalist, joining a political organization.