There's a lot of truth to what you present in the article. I think that the bottom line for these programmers is that they get to choose:

1. Stay with big tech, earn high salaries with great benefits, knowing you'll often be overworked.

2. Start your own business, knowing you'll likely fail (very few new companies stay in business after 5 years), and meantime will overwork yourself and have to do with little or no income.

3. Change employer and/or role so you experience less work pressure and stress, knowing you'll likely get paid much less and lose many of the great perks.

Even if you choose option 1, that doesn't mean you have to stick with it until retirement (or suicide). You can stay until your empoyer IPOs, or until you've saved up enough to "coast" at a lower-paying lower-pressure job elsewhere and still have an awesome retirement.