So I disagree that doing this stuff for free is inherently bad, but I fully agree with the sentiments of the rest of your post. Particularly this: "come hack for us, we give you a fancy chair and large monitors to stare at and even food! what else do you want out of your life?"
An old manager of mine was once on the phone to a recruitment agency trying to hire some developers complaining that they hadn't made progress, at one point he screamed, "it's software development, it's not fucking rocket science!" He did that in a room full of developers.
For some reason many non-technical people get to become managers of technical people and have that kind of opinion. This then leads to the, "well if it doesn't work you can stay here all night until it does" mentality.