Like every post, essay and book that includes the phrase "hacker ethos", it's really, really masturbatory, but I think he's right about the subculture having been defanged.
Oh, the irony of the author claiming that the hacker spirit is still alive by citing makerspaces as an example, rather than realizing they are the commercialized/"de-fanged" version of the hackerspace. Which isn't to say they're bad, just subtly different. And a bit appropriate-y
I really wish this essay hadn't taken such an... academic tone. The whole thing comes across as a graduate thesis, which suffocates the -- quite good! -- point the author is trying to make. I've been trying to figure out why I feel that way, though. I have a graduate degree, and I don't resent academia... but I still bristle when the tropes of academic rhetoric start showing up in online thinkpieces. Maybe that's what it is. This guy's clearly not a researcher in the field -- so when he uses formal, academic terms, he comes across as a dilettante. Like a guy who's taken Philosophy 101 and wants to talk to you about his deep insights into the nature of reality he's developed thanks to this crazy cave metaphor he studied. Anyway -- yes, the essay is right. Hacker culture has largely been supplanted by bro-yuppie culture. The same Patrick Bateman and Gordon Gecko types who used to go into finance in the 80s now go into tech, because that's where the money is.