The book "Computer Boys Take Over" by Nathan Ensmenger (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-boys-take-over) is a useful reference here. It goes through the early history of computing discipline and discusses how computing turned into a discipline, including professional organizations (including ACM, but also more "data processing" - think COBOL - oriented organizations). It also makes some fun points on interview process (tldr - it was broken even in 1950s :-)).

There are too many points in the book to summarize in a comment, but anyone who wants to read some - at least to some point - serious historical work on the topic should probably have a look at the book.