Comment by jwr

> there’s a certain pervasive collective worship of these employers that will just not quit

That's my observation as well. And I think this applies especially to Google: for some reason it still has the reputation of this cool tech company here on HN, even though it's an advertising and user tracking/profiling company at this point, and there is really nothing "cool" about it anymore. But criticize Google on HN and you'll get downvoted really quickly.