Can we rank these fields by day to day... sociability? Or how solitary they are?
Say, by the number of coworkers you talk to on a given day for a given number of hours. Or the amount of time you spend not at all speaking, and staring at a screen?
Can we approximate these somehow?
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Can we rank these fields by prestige in the eyes of the median person? E.g. If you are a biologist, does a guy on the street think its more interesting and glamorous than being a programmer? Or less? Why?
From the people I've talked to about why they didn't go into computer science/programming, a lot of them see programmers as essentially overpaid janitors or hi-tech sewer workers. They make Facebook/civilization/the internet run, but just how isn't important, and it probably isn't fun. The people I talked to have no idea what the pay scale is for programmers (actually many programmers I've talked have no idea what the pay scale is for programmers either). So they don't consider a cost-benefit very clearly when rejecting CS/Programming.
Also, when kids make program choices, they do it by their 'perception' of the profession, not by actual professional reality.
To reflect on first op, first half of the article is straw man attack, second half is golden insight. The author must be really scared of cultural studies-like interpretation to fend off so many windmills before giving us some meat.
Part of why I like computers is that I can spend my day not talking to these fucking apes that infest this planet -- present company excluded, of course. I say this as someone who's not a social moron, who's recognized as an excellent teacher, and who's actually interested in team-dynamics and debugging miscommunication.
If I'd wanted to be a social worker -- I would have become a social worker. Who let all these social workers into the computer lab?
Anecdata -- dated a kick-ass Data Scientist, and a Molecular Biology Prof recently (separately). Their professional interests were a large part of their attraction to me. As I got to know them, the data scientist confessed that she didn't really like the math and wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't so lucrative. The Prof. was much less interested in biochemistry than in how people relate to science in the context of health care.
So dissapoint.
Your expectations are pretty high if realizing this led you to be disappointed. Not expectations of your SO in particular, but in general about people.
I think this is inherent to most people - they generally don't enjoy the job they do, but they do it still to pay the bills and secure for yourself some form of retirement and safety net in your later years.
EDIT> But also, I generally don't do any job whose subject matter I don't enjoy. I'm different in this way, from most people. The concept of doing something that I don't like is very foreign to me, with all the positives and also negatives that entails.