That said, luminaries like Rob Pike and Rich Hickey do not have the above problem. They have the calibre and the freedom to push the boundaries, so to them the above problem is even amplified.
Personally I wish the IT industry can move forward to solve large-scale new problems, just like we did in the past 20 years: internet, mobile, the cloud, the machine learning... They created enormous opportunities (or the enormous opportunities of having software eat the world called for the opportunities?). I'm not sure we will be so lucky for the coming years, but we certainly should try.
The about-face is embarrassing, especially in the case of Rob Pike (who I'm sure has made 8+ figures at Google). But even Hickey worked for a crypto-friendly fintech firm until a few years ago. It's easy to take a stand when you have no skin in the game.
Is your criticism that they are late to call out the bad stuff?
Is your criticism that they are only calling out the bad stuff because it’s now impacting them negatively?
Given either of those positions, do you prefer that people with influence not call out the bad stuff or do call out the bad stuff even if they may be late/not have skin in the game?
Remember their embarrassing debut of Bard in Paris and the Internet collectively celebrating their all but guaranteed demise?
It's Google+ all over again. It's possible that Pike, like many, did not sign up for that.