It has been a while since I was at school and I am sure things have changed since then, however, most of the reasons cited here are not evident at that formativ

It has been a while since I was at school and I am sure things have changed since then, however, most of the reasons cited here are not evident at that formative, career deciding stage. At school/university you don't know about 'death marches', the obligation to work in a focused manner for more hours in the week than the stereotypical 'junior doctor' (allegedly they put in all the hours) or that projects are likely to be managed by people that cannot be bothered to learn the slightest thing about how things work 'under the hood'. The same could be said for almost any other profession - teachers go into it with idealism then get jaded once they find out the reality of what is asked for them. Same with anything else to varying extents. IMHO there are lots of different types of programmers with different motivations. Some are product/client/customer focused, plenty are not. Some fail to see programming as a creative endeavour - it might as well be car mechanics to them. For some people programming is all they are cut out for, only a miracle will move them on to something else or some late spurt of personal development might enable that. At the end of the day programming is hard work. But this is not the same sort of hard work that most people consider to be hard work. In some ways this difference is a bit like the difference between 'hot courage' and 'cold courage'. ('Hot courage' is what soldiers have when they do something courageous under fire, 'cold courage' is what Edward Snowden has.)