Once I was fortunate enough to work at a company that did not take VC money. I was very very lucky. It was a combination of luck, and ethical founders.

On the other hand, a VC funded company I worked for (Hampton Creek) seemed like a ponzi scheme. When I quit the options strike price was so expensive I couldn't afford to pay for the options nor the taxes to "gain", the alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars in value it was "worth". What a joke. I think in the end we will see a lot of these companies are loaded with red ink and offer very little value.

I venture to say a majority of these unicorns are pump-and-dump schemes.

Your intuition seems right. I remember a time when companies used their developers to update their site without having to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.