Their view is understandable if majorly flawed.

They were people who rolled the dice on their interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over their peers as software work consumed the world.

Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of them are seeing the writing on the wall, and are wondering whether they were anything special at all.

The answer of course is no, but it's a tough pill to swallow. So cling on desperately to the idea that they can "bootstrap" themselves back into success

In a roundabout way, I guess what I'm saying is that for the last few decades they have never needed to have any shred of sympathy for others, and believed that their success was derived purely from their own efforts and not from opportunities that existed at the beginning of their careers