It has become much more common in the last, say, 10 years, than it ever was. It used to be an extreme last resort, now people talk about it like it’s the obvious first step. Discussed previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32223003>
Hacker news thread is not exactly a sociological proof. In that thread, people talk in abstract and no one reading it has any way to figure out a.) what happened in anecdotes they talk about b.) whether such situations are more frequent then in the past. Besides, hacker news is a place where imaginary past gets written about all the time.
