They wanted it all, to be treated like a tech revolutionary and to be fawned over like a millionaire banker."

Course they do, they've been told every step along the way that (And hey, a minority of them do have a point, computers revolutionized shit). It's been that way since the 80s. Companies love 'em: Tell them they are saving humanity and they'll work the 80 hours a week and forget it's just a job. They can nerd out with other nerds, because that's what we all are, introverts who got good in the virtual while we sat in isolation from the tangible.

Of course, no one tells them that the system is going to spit them back out when they're 40 and looking to settle down. Some play it smart and move into management. Those who don't end up shuffling between corporations, looking for the safest job option when they are rained from above by cuts after product launches and losing business to the kid half a globe away who figured out that writing an app in docker and node.js brought more profits than supporting a company's legacy COBOL app.