I like these sorts of analysis, whether I agree or not.
I've come to believe though, that they need humour. There's always a tendency to over-extrapolate, get hung up on typologies which crack under weight and to assume the model is the main thing going on. Humour gives them a productive "playing with ideas" vibe, keeps it honest.
In software development, for example, I always think that demographics play a big role. Every decade we get more young programmers than the last. Many older programmers "graduate out" one way or another. The resulting demographics are unusual, with a years of experience pyramid more like the military than most professions.
Technology, methods and philosophy change rapidly. This is both exasperated by and causal to the demographics, and the youth/pace of the field itself. A lot of software culture has this relationship with the demographics. Maybe 60yo developers are more likely to produce important new things, but they are outnumbered 100-1 by 20-somethings... enforcing youth biases, etc.
I think a lot of this essays thoughts on learning might be affected by software demographics. A lawyer, accountant or aviation engineer's thoughts on learning and career progression probably encompasses much longer time periods. In software, we think in much shorter timescales. Between the age of 22 & 27, a programmer has progressed through a "career." Between the age of 22 & 27, an accountant has progressed through a cadetship.
The difference is no accountant does accountancy in their bedroom for fun as a teenager. The software engineer who has significantly progressed their career by 27 probably started as a teenager, not as a 22 year old. It's more like being a musician than being a lawyer or an accountant.
There are plenty of cases where programmers only start programming for real at a post-college job. The majority case, even.
That said, sure. There are differences in substance, history, everything. Those might be the reason for differences between professions, but the question is "how much?"
I think we overemphasize legible, logical reasons for culture, but often it's incidental reasons path dependence, demographics, etc.
I think that programmers who first start programming for real at a post college job don't make significant career progression by 27 unless they are very talented. You are looking at outliers and saying look these outliers don't exist in accounting and law, and you would be right because very few people in those professions are so crazy about them that they live and breath it.
I've come to believe though, that they need humour. There's always a tendency to over-extrapolate, get hung up on typologies which crack under weight and to assume the model is the main thing going on. Humour gives them a productive "playing with ideas" vibe, keeps it honest.
In software development, for example, I always think that demographics play a big role. Every decade we get more young programmers than the last. Many older programmers "graduate out" one way or another. The resulting demographics are unusual, with a years of experience pyramid more like the military than most professions.
Technology, methods and philosophy change rapidly. This is both exasperated by and causal to the demographics, and the youth/pace of the field itself. A lot of software culture has this relationship with the demographics. Maybe 60yo developers are more likely to produce important new things, but they are outnumbered 100-1 by 20-somethings... enforcing youth biases, etc.
I think a lot of this essays thoughts on learning might be affected by software demographics. A lawyer, accountant or aviation engineer's thoughts on learning and career progression probably encompasses much longer time periods. In software, we think in much shorter timescales. Between the age of 22 & 27, a programmer has progressed through a "career." Between the age of 22 & 27, an accountant has progressed through a cadetship.