The ratio changed after software engineering became a way to make a lot of money. It used to be there were a handful of well paying gigs and a bunch of "pretty good" jobs, but SE wasn't a huge outlier.

Once people flooded the field to make money, things changed. Used to be if I met another software engineer they'd 100% geek out over technology, CPU architectures, programming languages, etc. It wasn't ever just a job.

Or to put it another way, Microsoft used to be filled with people rocking back and forth in their chairs avoiding eye contact discussing cool tech things. When I went on my interview loop at MSFT I discussed the mornings Slashdot headlines with every person who interviewed me.