FWIW, I agree with pretty much everything you've said. But I don't think it's unique to any profession or individual that they tend to care the most deeply when it hits them directly.
The only thing I don't really agree with is where you say "My parents-in-law started their careers as management consultants. The job in their time was much higher prestige and much higher value than it was when I started my career." I still think of management consultants as some of the highest paid careers around, and getting a partnership track job at one of the Big 3 is one of the most desirable jobs (for MBA types anyway) there is, so I just don't know what you're talking about with this one.
> But I don't think it's unique to any profession or individual that they tend to care the most deeply when it hits them directly.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. I just meant that part of the unique feelings in the air for software engineers is that this is the first time we're facing this.
> I still think of management consultants as some of the highest paid careers around, and getting a partnership track job at one of the Big 3 is one of the most desirable jobs
There's plenty of other jobs the MBA type could get into these days which are also high prestige and there are now many more tiers of management consultants. The elite folks at McKinsey are still high prestige with high salaries, but your average Accenture or Deloitte consultant is both pay and prestige wise about the same as an average knowledge worker. Plenty of VCs, fund managers, and investors are high prestige MBA-types. The explosion of private capital means there's a lot of opportunity to manage private capital; private capital markets were just much shallower 50 years ago.