Because pursuing creative, passion industries often do not pay the bills (due to oversupply or labour gatekeeping). Game developers being exhibit A. For non sof

Because pursuing creative, passion industries often do not pay the bills (due to oversupply or labour gatekeeping). Game developers being exhibit A. For non software engineering examples, look at traditional engineering and STEM. Most aerospace engineers start out with dreams of human space travel, they will either end up building missiles and drones, pivot, or work for one of Elon's passion companies that are infamous for their work life balance. People enter life science with the intention of becoming doctors yet most will be stuck with debt and a dead end job after graduation with medicine being forever out of reach. Teaching and non-tenured/non-STEM academia pays so badly (not to mention the incredible gatekeeping to even get the job) that you will probably find more English graduates on OnlyFans than your local college's literature department. Writing JavaScript apps is hardly the most meaningful job but it is a safe career path with good growth for current roboticists or electrical engineering graduates. Software engineering may be materialistic and CRUD apps boring, but they are an easy, uncontroversial way to pay the bills for the massive pool of STEM (and occasional non-STEM) talent we have right now.