So, my guess is that non-developers seeing Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Brin & Page, and other developers start business that then rewrote large parts of how so

So, my guess is that non-developers seeing Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Brin & Page, and other developers start business that then rewrote large parts of how society functioned, without much caring about what non-developers thought of this, would disagree. Developers are already perceived by many as acting in a high-handed manner to reshape society without caring about the opinion of that society. More use of "leverage" is not what seems called for. Now if you're the dev stuck in a bad corporate hierarchy, sure, it looks very different. But programmers as a group have used their leverage plenty, just maybe not in the ways that would always be helpful to other members of their group.