If you're building a website for a bank, it is definitely IT work. Nobody sees you as anything but a cost center.

>How do you switch from one strain to another?

End up around people that already have that strain, get their attention, and become friends so you can learn and they can teach. You unfortunately just can't teach yourself everything.

It sounds like another form of pedigree selection. Or maybe dividing the field up into "us vs. them". Pretty understandable sentiment if you get pushed into fixing Healthcare.gov like he describes in one of his talks and working with guys arguing about tickets not existing because they're on different ticket systems and people with zero motivation to build a decent product. Wastage is immense in IT from the sounds of it in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vc8sxhy2I4

IT mindsets.