One of the big drivers for civil rights came from the experience in WWII. In war, there is an overarching purpose. You want to achieve your mission, and survive the war to make it home to your family. The identity of those who help you achieve those goals doesn't matter as much (very few people care about the skin color of someone who saves their life).
What if tech became less of an identity and more of just a job that you did with your co-workers not to "change to world", but just to make money?
--Solzhenitsyn
I think there's probably more to your observation than meets the eye. Specifically, there is a kind of dilemma that faces most workers these days. They can either A) get a nice, safe, "boring" career, or B) do something on their own (which is risky).
The people who choose A) are the kind of people who want stability and comfort while the people who choose B) typically do so because they have some kind of goal or motivation that they're willing to endure some resistance and risk to achieve. I personally suspect lots of programmers are joining startups expecting A, when the culture is closer to that of B (since the founders of any given startup have, almost by definition, chosen B.)