I don't understand "tab hoarders" but I also don't understand why Mac users pollute their desktop with a thousand icons either. I guess some people like clean workspaces, and some don't mind clutter.
It happens on Macs I’m sure, but the picture in my head of someone doing this to the extreme is definitely a Windows user.
[edit] for my part, as a Mac user, I couldn’t tell you whether my desktop’s full of icons (probably not?) nor what my background image is (… the default? Which I’m guessing is probably a mountain or a wave or something?) because I see my desktop so rarely, and never pay any attention to it.
I get it, but 100% of Mac users I've helped in my 25 years of professional computing had messy desktops. That's dozens (maybe close to 100) of Mac users. Not scientific, not conclusive, but it's exactly 100% with no exceptions. This includes fellow IT professionals and college acquaintances. The most recent experience being two days ago, where I assisted a Mac user in changing email settings. It's also very common for these Mac users to not understand file/folder structure. I often guide them to download a file/app, and once downloaded they generally have no idea where it went unless its... on their desktop! Same for "open" applications. For PC user's I'd say it's in the 10-20% range, low enough to be unremarkable.
Something sounds a bit off if your IT professionals don’t understand files and folders. In any case, my anecdata in an organisation of over 1000 windows computers and about 400 macs is the windows device owners are generally the ones with icons strewn about the place and displays plugged in set to mirror ‘because it gives them more space’ but I tend to find this is because the windows users are the ‘business’ users whereas the macs are the developers.
Windows users have had screens full of icons since at least the 3.x days... and you can easily search google images for tons of Windows 98/XP screenshots from the early 2000s of desktops completely filled to the brim with shortcuts and such.
This is a strange generalization to make. I think it's more of a subset of computer users in general, not just Mac users...