> Do employees vastly outnumber founders on Hacker News?

That's just globally true. For all I know, bots may outnumber both of those groups as well.

> And if so, could that explain some of the negativity towards speculative and crazy ideas?

Do you have specific examples in mind? I can't conjure links and am just operating from memory, but I recall reading about lot of ideas that are less speculative/crazy and more nonsense that feels out of touch with what actual humans would want or need.