You are exactly right. My boss is one of these self-loathing software developers that constantly sees it fit to remind me that we're all privileged sissies who

You are exactly right. My boss is one of these self-loathing software developers that constantly sees it fit to remind me that we're all privileged sissies who get to play on computers and get paid obscenely well for it. I don't buy that. He may feel that way, but I didn't start off in software development. I worked my way into it before there was ever a coursera or any other "become a developer quick" program. I did this by working a full time job to pay bills, then coming home and spending another 8 hours a day (and entire weekends) learning and honing. It would take 2 years of these 100-hour weeks to get to a point where I could actually begin doing this work at a professional level. So I don't buy it. I hit a lot of walls and wanted to give up many times. And I've always loved computers! It still takes a special person to do the work we do. It wasn't like that for auto manufacturing.