I've found that programmers tend to be socially liberal (pro-gay rights, abortion rights, etc.) but financially conservative (don't like their money being spent on public goods). Which somewhat overlaps with libertarianism, yes.
I would call it libertarianism if most of the people I've written to seem to actually believe in minarchist government and having rights limited only as much as absolutely necessary. I don't think that's what most people on here believe. I think most people here hold a few political-social ideas they strongly believe in (such as LGBT issues or clean energy), a smattering of other fashionable social opinions, and then finally an entirely selfish collection of fiscal ideas which objectively seem to benefit themselves the most.
I dunno if that's true either. Things like UBI were wacky ideas popular in SV culture long before their recent mainstreaming. I think the libertarian streak is better described as a mistrust/realism (depending in your views) of the _competency_ of any given government program.
The government's advantage is that it lets us directly align objectives in a way that markets often don't, but it's disadvantage is that it'll generally optimize much less efficiently for the objective it's targeting. This means that government action and markets are appropriate in different situations; I'm not crazy about the fact that we're the least competent at transit construction in the developed world, but I'm still a supporter of transit investment despite the eye-popping levels of waste.
Live in San Francisco long enough, and you get a really strong sense of how detached a government can get from reality, and how much its actions can reflect the selfishness and idiocy of part of its constituency instead of any pretense of benefiting society or achieving its goals. It's unsurprising that you'd see a portion of the population, especially one used to more well- functioning institutions, start to drift towards support of government policy that doesn't rely on individuals within govt making complex decisions. UBI and other such hands-off policies fit directly into this. They're not anti-govt spending, they're anti-centralized decision-making
Many programmers I know have no problem with money getting spent on public goods, as long as they're public good and not public stupidity, pork barrel spending, vanity projects, and that sort of thing.
That said, I do think American-style right-wing/capitalist libertarians are overrepresented among programmers compared to the average public, as are left-wing libertarian socialists/anarchist.
