You can replace "trendy" with "good cultural fit" in many places. Cultural fit is arguably the most important factor in hiring someone. From my network, I see a hugely different culture at Microsoft and Google. Just saying.
Very strong engineering teams are not necessary comfortable places, because they have members with different but complementary viewpoints. The cultural fit in this case is to be able to debate vigorously but also to be able to accept decisions and move on together. It's not that important to be friends outside of work.
Its obviously OK to implement it, plenty of examples of that, just not OK to talk about it in public.