I feel the same way. Don't know any software engineers or developers outside of work, rarely meet anyone in the field outside of the odd meetup (and usually not

I feel the same way. Don't know any software engineers or developers outside of work, rarely meet anyone in the field outside of the odd meetup (and usually not even then) and come from a family who work in other industries. However, I suspect it might be a location/culture thing more than anything personal. I mean, over here in London it seems like most people in the tech industry don't really care for it as a passion or hobby, but just treat programming like a 9-5 job without any extra side projects going on outside of that. Maybe that's the case in Chicago where you are too. Maybe most of the companies there are filled with people who at the end of the day just don't care about tech as much as Silicon Valley folk do. Maybe for them it's just a 9-5 deal like it is for many folk here. There's nothing unusual about that.