Very interesting, 2012 marks an inflection point, a change of the regime. I noticed that at that time the discourse shifted from the founder's concerns to that of the employees and became less interesting for me.
It is interesting to see that exponential growth stopped and linear growth set in. I wasn't around at that time, so I'd be curious if it's the reason you give.
For me HN is the highest signal place on the internet for founder and tech content.