I quite concur with you, though nerd/tech/hack circles seemed critical of each other since forever.

But isn’t it just shift of the tech in general?

From quirky, optimistic, positive, “don’t be evil”, inclusive ~20 years ago.

To corporate, creepy, fascist, ultra greedy since ~10 years[1] ago and onwards to this day.

I could feel gradual change of comments more into right political spectrum, since 7-8 years.

[1] Personally - Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal is that point for me.

It might also have to do with the self-image of developers.

The slice of software development that is purely "finding technical solutions" is shrinking.

You increasingly need to identify with the purpose of the software you are developing.

Spaces of detached "purely technical" software development are shrinking.

So you either say your job is to turn specs into software, then you need to aim at technically demanding tasks. Or you aim at being good at doing this at scale without being particularly involved with the purpose.

The pure "developing an efficient implementation of this clearly defined requirement" part of software engineering is retreating to spaces with really thanklessly complex or tight requirements, and even then, you need to be extraordinaly good.

The gray area between "software where the tiniest bug is a legal liability" and "software that seems cool, fix bugs later" is shrinking.