I have noticed on HN a weird idea that most programmers are insanely rich and can pick and choose any job they like (I even saw one person say "lets be honest, none of us need a job..."), so I guess they're going by the logic that if you work for them you either endorse their worldview or don't care, which as you say I doubt is true for the majority of us

I probably wouldn't want to work for a manager who filtered out names from their list based on previous employers alone. That seems like petty and self-sabotaging behavior.