Competition. When I was in high school some 15 years ago many of my classmates wanted to make games. It was seen as fun and because it was seen as you had to be smart to do it (parents had no clue) it was in my classmates eyes the perfect combination.
Fifteen years later and the competition is huge, and the demand in overtime and the stress followed.
As you start to make even more “programming is fun” classes, what they don’t see is the other end, and then queue in the FAANG salaries as if that is indicative of what programmers salaries are.
If I get kids, I’ll tell them to do some soul digging to find out what they find fun that the majority instead finds boring or something that has a clear path through a moat.
Which begs the question how do other areas of development get such easy conditions?