Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel have talked about a similar phenomenon applied to YC and startups in general. It seems that early on it was a weird and nonconformist career move, but now it has become something that is done out of the same conforming impulse that going to school or working at a big firm mean to an individual in society.
Before when you had a startup it was because you had a passion and an idea. Now the passion is the idea of the startup and a big exit. Totally different groups of people.
Tech improves and stabilizes. Always will.
Startup ideas back then were actually useful bleeding edge work.
Now it's all git pull and import the world with a languages package manager; no more need to optimize and normalize low level code.