Bay area tech companies aren't the norm even for programmers. There are like 4 million software devs in the US, most of us are working at companies you've never heard of, and have office norms much closer to that of the rest of office workers. Often somewhat more prestige and flexibility, but not so dramatic.
So yes I think your experience is probably an outlier. And on HN generally I think that sort of environment is overrepresented still.
