RE: https://oldbytes.space/@howtophil/117235140915608418 growing up, when we had the computer class in school, I used to be genuinely excited. Not one of my parents grew up with computers either, so this came to me naturally. I liked maths or english literature but this was the class I gravitated towards. I had no idea of the money to be made in computers as a career back then, or someone to tell me software engineers are "well paid". So, that's how I slowly made up my mind that maybe I could study, work on these machines after growing up. And then came the latter years, the Indian middle-class's realization through word of mouth, then the media started picking it up, portray CS as the ladder to success, a path to higher social hierarchy while sitting at a desk, colleges started advertising CS degrees, running full page adverts on national newspapers quoting the salary their recent passouts secured at Google, Microsoft, Samsung etc. It gained even more momentum. It became common knowledge, at least in India that IT/CS is somehow the safest bet. And so people started pushing their kids to these programs, these majors started attracting otherwise dis-interested but obviously sharp students who could ace any exam, and since India works on exam scores, the competition grew larger. I'm not trying to gatekeep, this is something I observed in my latter years. Personally speaking, I had a room-mate in my final year of college who was a top-tier CS student who hated programming, and confessed he always wanted to be a Math researcher and then professor. I hope you're doing well, Adi, wherever you are. I keep reading about these burn out cases and don't get me wrong, the entire "corporate" culture contributes to that, but you can't say non computer enthusiasts in it for the money, feeling out of place, is not a contributing factor, even if its 0.001%. /rant end lol