Maybe I'm just heartless but having to "go get a job writing CRUD apps somewhere" to make ends meet doesn't exactly trigger my sympathy response. If that's your backup option you're doing better than 99% of the population.
I believe they are not talking about the individual suffering there, but about the industry as a whole suffering because experienced talent is getting drained out.
Games these days have a lot of CRUD too. I spent the last 3 years in the games industry writing REST APIs and client code that consume them. Clans, messaging, friends, matchmaking, content update infrastructure, leaderboards, saving progress, in-app purchases, live-tuning... It's all CRUD
Maybe I'm just heartless, but "I have to either move cities or switch to another field that I'm also qualified for" does not really sound like too bad of a deal to me. I mean yeah, it's a pain not to be able to keep on doing what you've been doing, but neither of those options sounds life-shattering to me.
Why is this kind of accusatory moralizing so common on HN? It seems really needlessly confrontational.