Fascinating argument, which fits me well (PhD ChemE who learned software and is now SWE at large tech firm). Allow me to take an alternative argument: Highly-d

Fascinating argument, which fits me well (PhD ChemE who learned software and is now SWE at large tech firm). Allow me to take an alternative argument: Highly-driven students, especially those driven by money, became ChemEs to earn a lot of money and prestige. They looked up highest paying majors and chose ChemE for these reasons. I think it is now obvious SWE is very high paying and prestigious -- perhaps more so than ChemE -- so these highly-driven people switched. It had nothing to do with the topics intrinsically, but rather ChemE was largely perceived as the hardest/most-prestigious field and now SWE is.