--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.)