Almost no one doesn’t mean no one. There’s been so much growth in the industry in the past 20 years that even if everyone working in 2001 was still working now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a small minority compared to the sea of new talent
They obviously exist but from a quick and dirty google search it looks like there was roughly 500k-600k software engineers in 2000 and over 4 million today in the US. Even if zero of the ones from 2000 attritioned out they’d be ~13% of the work force and I highly doubt none of them have retired in a 2 decade span
When layoffs happen, people project their fears and insecurities about their own fate by attempting to create perceived differences and virtues that separate them from those affected, mostly to convince themselves that their situation is different and it won’t happen to them. “Ha, those childish perks, and immature people working at those companies not shipping value.”
Read that as “I envied them before, but hopefully my suffering will be worth it if I don’t lose my job”.